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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

 
EXPENSIVE BERKELEY COUNTY SOUTH CAROLINA JAIL ANNEX STILL EMPTY

Berkeley jail annex still empty

Addition can't be used until state agency gives OK

CORNER -- A $10 million expansion to the crowded Berkeley County jail sits empty 10 months after it was scheduled to open.

The annex, built after years of debate by County Council, still is undergoing work on its security and safety systems to satisfy state regulations.

Photo by Alan Hawes

The opening of the addition to the Berkeley County jail in Moncks Corner has been delayed until all state regulations are satisfied.

"People have been asking why we have this Taj Mahal sitting here, and we're not even using it," Detention Center Director Cliff McElvogue said. "I can definitely say it's not finished. We can't do anything until we get approval from the Department of Corrections."

The annex looks like a corrugated steel warehouse between the courthouse and the old jail. It appears to be finished on the outside, but subcontractors and inspectors are busy on the inside redoing some of the work, McElvogue said.

Work started about two years ago, and the annex was supposed to open in February.

McElvogue said he has no estimate on when the addition might be ready to open because that depends on the inspectors. Tuesday was a county holiday, so workers were not at the site, and it wasn't possible to find out exactly what still needed to be done.

It also was unclear how much having to redo some of the work would add to the project's cost.

County Council debated the jail expansion for years before finally approving the money. The annex will add 204 beds.

The annex is needed because the old jail is too crowded. The old jail is approved for 154 inmates but almost 500 inmates were packed in there a couple years ago, putting many on the floor, overcrowding cells and generating a flood of complaints.

While the annex was being built, the jail population declined. The number of inmates was down to 307 on Tuesday.

"We're still crowded, but we've got some breathing room," McElvogue said.

The jail population is down because the 9th Circuit Solicitor's Office and the courts have been processing cases faster and giving more non-violent offenders alternative sentences such as work release, he said.

The county will have to hire additional staff for the annex, but has not determined how many more people, McElvogue said. Determining staffing requirements is part of the plan the county is working on with the Department of Corrections, he said.

The county borrowed the money to build the annex, but would have to include extra detention officers in the general budget.

County Supervisor Dan Davis said he has been meeting with the Sheriff's Office and corrections officials.

"We are probably going to need some additional staff," he said Tuesday. "We think we can accomplish that without too much burden on the taxpayers of Berkeley County."

Davis said he didn't think the extra work raised the cost much beyond $10 million, if at all. He said the original estimates that the annex would be open in February were overly optimistic.

When the annex opens, nonviolent offenders will share big spaces like dormitories, monitored by video cameras. Visitors will talk to inmates through video cameras. Bond court will be conducted by video camera.

Charleston County opened a $100 million jail expansion in April, adding about 1,200 beds to its Leeds Avenue complex.

Dorchester County opened a new wing to its jail in St. George in 2005, adding about three dozen beds and further separating men and women inmates.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

 
OKLAHOMA DOING POOR JOB--SOUTH CAROLINA DOING WORSE JOB

According to the most recent data available from the Office of Child Support Enforcement of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Oklahoma has 139,413 child support cases with arrears due and 89,500 cases paying towards arrears. According to the same data, South Carolina has 139,894 cases with arrears due and 77,130 cases paying towards arrears. Click Table 6: CASES WITH ARREARS DUE AND CASES PAYING TOWARDS ARREARS, FY 2008 to review the complete table.

Although there are some states that are doing a worse job than Oklahoma is doing, we picked Oklahoma because of its similarity with South Carolina in terms of the total number of child support cases with arrears due. However, readers will note that while South Carolina has only 581 more child support cases with arrears due than Oklahoma, South Carolina has 12,370 more cases that are not paying towards arrears than does Oklahoma. The total number of child support cases with arrears due in which no payments are being made towards the arrears in South Carolina is 62,764, which works out to a non-payment rate of 45%. The total number of child support cases with arrears due in which no payments are being made towards the arrears in Oklahoma is 49,913, which works out to a non-payment rate of 36%.

Because South Carolina is doing such a poor job of collecting child support arrearages, U. S. taxpayers are having to help support 62,764 South Carolina households containing hundreds of thousands of children that do not belong to them. And at last count, South Carolina was receiving approximately $40,000,000 in Temporary Aid to Needy Families on an annual basis.

Something is not right with this picture.

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NEW HIRE REPORTING & JIM HODGES, ET. AL. V. TOMMY G. THOMPSON, ET. AL.

Note the following from http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/002512.P.pdf:

The district court opinion contains a comprehensive history, the details of which need not be repeated here, of the federal government’s longstanding involvement in child support enforcement programs and related federal efforts to work with the States to solve the serious problem of nonpayment of child support. See Hodges v. Shalala, 121 F.Supp.2d 854 (D.S.C. 2000). Currently, as a condition of receipt of any federal funding under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 651-669, States must have an approved state plan for child and spousal support that meets all the requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 654. Among the prerequisites for approval of a Title IV-D Plan are the requirements that the State establish and operate an automated data processing and information retrieval system, see 42 U.S.C. § 654(24), and a state child support disbursement unit (SDU), see 42 U.S.C. § 654(27)(A). South Carolina concedes that it has neither a federally certifiable statewide automated system for child support nor an SDU. See Hodges, 121 F. Supp. 2d at 86 (emphasis added).

Without an approved state plan, a State may lose federal funding under both Title IV-D (child support enforcement) and Title IV-A (TANF). See 42 U.S.C. § 655(a)(1)(A); 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(2). Alternatively, a State may opt for an alternative penalty in lieu of disapproval of their state plan and the withholding of federal funds if the State is making a good faith effort to comply with the program’s requirements and the State has submitted a corrective compliance plan. See 42 U.S.C. § 655(a)(4). South Carolina has elected to incur the alternative penalty.

South Carolina needs to get a New Hire Reporting Statute in place just as the other forty-nine states have done. Doing so would help South Carolina locate the 70,000 parents who are not paying their court-ordered child support; it would also help get some of the custodial parents off of welfare and their children off of Medicaid. Additionally, not only is it unconscionable that South Carolina has enabled non-custodial parents to steal over $1.2 Billion from their children, but like the computerized child support tracking and collection system, a state new hire reporting system and registry is required by 42 U.S.C. § 655.

Those who do not believe us on this last point should ask South Carolina State Senator Mike Rose and/or the attorney for the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee if we are correct. Or better yet, ask Vicki Turetsky, Commissioner for the Office of Child Support Enforcement in the Department of Health and Human Services whether we are correct. Both of them have law degrees from very prestigious institutions.

Of course, Ms. Turetsky and Senator Rose may not be any more concerned about the fact that the South Carolina General Assembly and the CSED of the Department of Social Services are doing so little to collect the $2 Billion+ that is owed to non-custodial parents in South Carolina than is South Carolina DSS Director Dr. Kathleen Hayes. Both of them have known about this problem for over eight months and Dr. Hayes has been aware of the problem for even longer. Yet all of them have done nothing to address the problem.

In her defense, Ms. Turetsky is an equal opportunity neglector of child support recipients--nationwide over $100 Billion is owed in child support arrears, but despite the availability of Draconian laws to enforce compliance with Support Orders, the arrears are increasing rather than decreasing.

Hopefully, the New Year will be better for everyone and those in a position to do so will actually do something to help the families who are going without support rather than just paying lip service to the problem.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

 
THE DEMISE OF CYNDI MOSTELLER'S INFLUENCE IS GREATLY EXAGGERATED

Earl Capps wrote at http://earlcapps.blogspot.com/2010/12/meet-2010-joker-of-year.html:

Cyndi Mosteller: For years, she was an extreme and polarizing figure in GOP circles. Well known for blurring the line between religion and politics in order to support her candidates and personal agendas, she was becoming increasingly marginalized by those who saw her erratic, vicious and self-serving tactics as toxic.

This year, Mosteller found a way to accelerate her political retirement when she teamed up with Liana Orr, another high-maintenance outcast from GOP politics, to run a shadowy attack group which attacked Governor-elect Nikki Haley with undisclosed campaign contributions. In the end, the failure to be candid about her motives and who backed those efforts have done much to put her out to political pasture. Her divisive style of politics won’t be missed.

Contrary to Mr. Capps' belief, the days of Cyndi Mosteller's political influence are hardly in the past. For example, she is on the Board of Heritage Community Services to which the State of South Carolina is poised to hand another $800,000 of the people's money. And this appears to be in addition to the $800,000 federal grant DHEC is apparently steering to Heritage. In the meantime, while DSS is being slowly starved for funding, Ms. Mosteller's brother, South Carolina State Senator Chip Campsen, helped deny the South Carolina Child Support Enforcement Division South Carolina one of its most powerful tools by voting against the enactment of mandatory new hire reporting in South Carolina. This may be one reason that according to the United States Office of Child Support Enforcement the Arrears Amounts Due in South Carolina increased last year by 5% to $1,234,595,152.

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

 
NEW HIRE REPORTING AND THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Those who want the background story may wish to review both the South Carolina New Hire Reporting Form and The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). However, the long and the short of this issue is that the PRWORA mandates that all states which receive certain federal funds both set up a New Hire Reporting Registry and require that all employers—with limited exceptions--report new hires to the state Child Support Enforcement agency. South Carolina has created and posted the requisite forms on the Internet, but remains the only state that does not require mandatory reporting by employers.

So why would the South Carolina Senate refuse to make New Hire Reporting mandatory and thereby risk losing $80,000,000 per year in federal funding? Simple--the South Carolina business community considers mandatory reporting of new hires "anti-business" and "a burden on employers." And why would that be, one may ask? The answer is that the New Hire Reporting Form not only has to be filed in a timely manner, but that it contains the SSN (or Green Card #), D. O. B., and address of new hires and that the information on the submitted form is to be checked against a National Database. The South Homebuilders Association and the Chamber of Commerce--among others--oppose this legislation because, once it is enacted, businesses will not be able to hire undocumented immigrants below minimum wage, house eighteen undocumented Mexican workers in one apartment, avoid with-holding F. I. C. A., or avoid obtaining Worker's Comp Insurance. Moreover, once the New Hire Reporting Law goes into effect, businesses that fail to comply with the reporting requirements can be both audited and fined.

The bottom line is that if the South Carolina Senate would push forward on this legislation finding 70,000 “Deadbeats” would become much easier.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

 
SOUTH CAROLINA DSS FINES MOUNT


Will Folks writes in "DSS Fines Mount," “Such is the game of unfunded federal mandates,” thereby implying that South Carolina is being victimized by the federal government’s decision to fine the state for its failure to comply with an unfunded mandate. In our view, that implication is absurd.

The federal mandate to implement a computerized child support tracking and collection system is not exactly unfunded. DSS records show that South Carolina has received $79,901,279 to date for implementation of the system. Moreover, had the system been implemented and the child support collections rate increased, South Carolina would have been eligible for incentive bonuses. This is in addition to the approximately $80,000,000 in yearly federal Title IV-D (child support enforcement) and Title IV-A Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funding that South Carolina receives and which is currently at risk. (Click here for an explanation of how much South Carolina receives in Title IV-D and TANF funding on an annual basis and why that funding is at risk.)

Rather than complaining about the big bad federal government, maybe the South Carolina General Assembly should make some bona fide attempts to actually understand federal law and to enact mandated legislation. And, rather than “rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic,” maybe Governor Nikki Haley should appoint a DSS Director who is not only committed to reform, but who actually understands how to implement mandated reform. And maybe that person should give some serious thought on how to avoid losing $80,000,000 a year in federal funding.

Incidentally, our disagreement with Mr. Folks should in one way be construed as a personal attack against him. We sometimes link to his site and often read the postings to his site. We even sometimes agree with his positions. For example, we agree that DSS is severely mismanaged. We just don't agree that the mandates contained in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act are either unreasonable or unfunded. Essentially, the federal government said to South Carolina, "We are tired of sending so much AFDC money to you each month, so we are going to provide you with a way to make South Carolina fathers pay to support their own children. Additionally, we will fund child support collection costs as well as most of the costs of a computerized tracking and collection system. The catch is that you have to both implement the computerized program and pay for part of the costs. And if you don't implement the program we will start taking our money back and may even stop sending money to you."

We have no idea why these systems cost so much money. Nor do we have any idea of how much they cost to run on an annual basis, though other states can probably provide that information. We do know, however, that the federal government has given South Carolina about $80 Million to build the system and that the federal government sends South Carolina about $40 Million each year to pay for collection of child support; this is on top of the unmonitored "fines" the various family courts access against "deadbeat dads" for child support collection as well as the interest generated on both child support payments and the collected, but undistributed, child support payments paid through the Family Court. We also know that South Carolina's arrearages are increasing, whereas other states who have instituted federally-mandated programs have seen an increase in collections and a decrease in arrearages.

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Saturday, December 11, 2010

 
STATE CHILD SUPPORT BOX SCORES FOR FY 2009

Click here to review the Office of Child Support Enforcement State Child Support Boxscores for FY 2009.

South Carolina is falling further behind. According to these boxcores the Arrears Amounts Due in South Carolina has increased by 5% to $1,234,595,152. Compare this to Pennsylvania, where the Arrears Amounts Due has decreased by 14.3% to $1,259,004,982.

What is it that Pennsylvania knows that South Carolina does not know?

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