ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996                 TAG: 9605300057
SECTION: EDITORIAL                PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO 

PAY OR PARK JERKING THE JERKS' LICENSES

STUDIES suggest that many absentee parents more faithfully make monthly car payments on time than child-care payments.

How appropriate, then, that a new Virginia law allows the state to revoke driver's licenses of those habitually in arrears on child support. Indeed, the law is working so well it makes one wonder about some parents' priorities. Not a few deadbeats who've previously resisted all manner of entreaties and threats are now paying up rather than risk the loss of driving privileges.

But never mind their priorities. It's the children's interests that have driven the need for this law - their interest in eating three regular meals a day, wearing shoes without holes in the soles, living in homes where the light or water hasn't been cut off because the custodial parent couldn't pay the bills.

The public's interest also is at stake. Taxpayers often have to compensate for absentee parents' failure to live up to their responsibility.

Since the state began notifying deadbeats that their driving permits were on the line, more than 27,000 Virginia parents have forked over nearly $13 million they owed their children.

Only 37 child-support scofflaws have actually had their driver's licenses taken away. But as Janet Smoot, an official with the Department of Motor Vehicles, says, there are some real die-hards who won't give in no matter what penalties the state imposes.

It should be noted that the state doesn't sic the DMV on everyone who's occasionally late making a child-support payment. The license-revocation law kicks in only for those who are behind in payments for 90 days or longer or who owe $5,000 or more.

Tough, isn't it? Embarrassing, too. But the law's intent is get absentee parents to take seriously their court- or state-ordered child-support obligations - so ordered to make life a little less tough on their children. So, spare us, please, the Saab stories.

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