Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 28, 1994 TAG: 9406300060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: AUGUSTA, MAINE LENGTH: Medium
Maine made good Monday on repeated threats to yank the driver's licenses of parents who refuse to pay overdue child support, revoking driving privileges for eight fathers who together owe their kids more than $140,000.
A ninth man who was to lose his license quickly made arrangements to pay the $11,410 he owed, said Human Services Commissioner Jane Sheehan.
More licenses will be lifted, some as early as the end of this week.
Since the Legislature authorized the Family Financial Responsibility Act a year ago, the department has sent notices to roughly 20,000 parents who are at least 90 days behind in child support.
The threat has yielded the state $11.5 million in back payments, said Sheehan.
``We have had people come in and give us as much as $19,000'' since the warnings first went out, said Sheehan.
Gov. John McKernan proposed the pinch on delinquent parents when he realized Maine was paying millions in state aid to families made destitute by the parents' failure to pay support. These so-called ``deadbeat dads'' - fathers in 97 percent of the cases, mothers in 3 percent - were walking out on $150 million in support payments every year.
Besides driver's licenses, the state also can lift the licenses of doctors, lawyers, architects, plumbers, electricians, commercial fishermen and other professionals who fail to pay child support.
There's no priority for lifting either kind of license, said Peter Gore, a spokesman for Human Services.
``If someone has a driver's and professional license,'' he said, ``we'll go after both of them.''
The licenses were targeted because the state had no other way of penalizing many of the delinquent parents, who are not enrolled in public assistance programs and frequently have no jobs on which they report income to the state, Gore said.
Maine's stringent steps to collect the money attracted the attention of President Clinton. The $9.3 billion welfare reform proposal he sent to Congress last week includes a requirement that all states take similar action against parents with mounting child support debts.
In Maine, however, one licensing territory is sacrosanct: The state cannot strip its outdoors-loving residents of their hunting or fishing licenses.
Sheehan stressed that the program is designed not to punish parents but to get delinquent fathers and mothers to contact the state, acknowledge their debts and make arrangements to start paying them off.
But some of those affected say it's misguided.
``For educated, intellectual folks, they're going about this all wrong,'' said Alice Kennard. Her husband, Reynold, a truck driver, is one of the eight men whose licenses were revoked. ``When they pull his license, his job goes with it,'' she said.
Reynold Kennard, according to the state, owes $4,843 in support payments for children from a previous marriage. He and five of the seven others lose driving privileges July 7; two lost their licenses Monday.
The Kennards live in Fort Fairfield, a town in northern Maine; Kennard was out on a job Monday and could not be reached immediately for comment.
But Sheehan said the action should not surprise anyone.
``We've been warning people since last August this day would come, and now it's here,'' she said.
Sheehan said each of the eight men had received two earlier letters telling them their licenses were in jeopardy because of child-support debts that ranged from $4,843 to $38,065.
If they had contacted the state to work out a payment schedule, Human Services would have ordered their licenses reinstated, she said.
Also, all parents targeted to lose their licenses automatically get 20-day due-process periods in which they may try to show the state has erred, or arrange to make back payments.
by CNB