State Welfare Director Romaine Gilliland, left, and Deputy Administrator Gary Stagliano testify Tuesday, Mar. 3, 2009, at the Legislature in Carson City, Nev. Welfare officials told lawmakers that proposed welfare budget spending seeks to improve client services by decreasing telephone and office wait times. (AP Photo/Nevada Appeal, Cathleen Allison)
More than a decade after the state's most expensive computer system went online and two years after an audit that recommended major changes, Nevada still has the nation's worst record for finding and collecting child support payments.
"It's so frustrating to us and the custodial parents to have the worst system in the country," Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, told Welfare Administrator Romaine Gilliland during budget hearings Tuesday.
She pointed out that Nevada's efforts rank 54th in the nation " behind not only the other states but Washington D.C. and even the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Gilliland, who has been Welfare Administrator just since the start of the year, said fixing the problem is his top priority. He said he intends to move to get Stimulus money to help fix the system within the next 120 days.
Child Support Enforcement is required by federal law to collect money owed custodial parents, primarily low-income parents. The law is designed to get those parents, primarily mothers, the child support they are owed by "deadbeat dads."
Nevada is near or at the bottom in establishing paternity, the percentage of child support orders, the percent of support being collected and every other performance indicator the federal government uses.
Health and Human Services Director Mike Willden said after the meeting many of the problems with finding and collecting child support can be traced to the disjointed system where some responsibilities are at the state level and some at the county level.
"Time needs to be spent addressing who does what," he said.
He said there are other issues interfering with the collection effort as well, including the lack of a stable revenue source. The program is funded through the state share of money collected.
Willden said the biggest change he and Gilliland believe necessary is a change in approach away from taking everything through a courtroom.
"To improve collections, the state needs a more administrative process," he said. "Instead of everything going through the courts, many states are moving to masters and non-judges."
He said the result is not only improved collections but faster action to get the parent what she is owed.
The NOMADS computer program, which handles child-support cases in Nevada,
started out with a $12.7 million budget. A decade later in the mid-1990s, it was still being developed and the cost had risen past the $100 million mark " 75 percent of it federal funding.
Even before it was completed, it was described as hopelessly over complicated and out of date. It has since been modified to make it more user friendly ,and many of the bugs that plagued the design have been fixed. But Gilliland told the joint Senate Finance, Ways and Means subcommittee reviewing his budget Tuesday the computer system needs to be replaced.
Other parts of the budget were much more warmly received by lawmakers " especially his technology plan, which will soon allow those in need to apply over the Internet. He said that will make the process much shorter, improving efficiency for his employees by up to 20 percent.
"As you go through the process, it'll let you know whether or not you have a likelihood of qualifying," said Gilliland.
"That is a huge step," said Subcommittee Chairman Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno.
Gilliland said the technology plan will cost the state $11 million but, when completed, save the state $15 million a year.
He told the committee he has received permission to fill some 70 vacant positions and that his budget actually proposes to increase total staffing from 978 to more than 1,300. That will enable him to keep rural offices in Yerington, Hawthorne and Winnemucca open as well as one Las Vegas office, which was originally scheduled to close under Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposed budget. It will help reduce office wait times and delays in getting the checks coming to qualified recipients, he said.
The Welfare Division has a total budget of about $550 million over the biennium, $160 million of which is state General Fund money.
- Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.