Child-support ruling favorable, Anzai says

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

Although the state Child Support Enforcement Agency must try its best to track down people to whom approximately $3.5 million in child support money is owed, a judge's ruling this week was "generally favorable" toward the 16-year-old agency, state Attorney General Earl Anzai said yesterday.

"The plaintiffs went in asking for $9 million and essentially got zero," Anzai said.

He said the $3.5 million in checks that were sent to child support recipients and never cashed or returned to the agency because of bad mailing addresses was not money that the agency had lost or could not account for.

"It's been in the bank all this time," Anzai said.

He said the Child Support Enforcement Agency, which is a division of the attorney general's department, will do its best to comply with a ruling Tuesday by Circuit Judge Sabrina McKenna that a complete accounting be done by March 31 to identify whom the $3.5 million in outstanding checks was intended for.

Ann Kemp, a divorced mother who filed the class-action lawsuit against the agency in 1998 after it failed to pass on to her child support money that was being deducted from her ex-husband's paycheck, yesterday said she hopes McKenna's ruling will spur the Legislature to finance more positions at the agency.

"For the vast majority of people receiving child support, if a check doesn't come or is less than it's supposed to be and it's not a huge amount of money, it's not worth their time to go down to the agency to try to straighten things out," Kemp said. "This kind of case is exactly what class-action lawsuits were designed for."

Anzai was skeptical, however, that McKenna's ruling would prod the Legislature to increase the agency's financing. He said a study was done a few years ago and presented to the Legislature, showing that with the federal government putting in $2 for every $1 the state spent to increase the agency's financing, there would be "a multiplier effect" resulting in a boost to the state's economy.

The Legislature killed the proposed financing increase, Anzai said.

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.