Failed child support bill that cost Idaho $46 million in federal funds to be readdressed
When Idaho legislators rejected a child support bill in the last 10 hours of the legislative session earlier this year, University of Idaho law professor Liz Brandt said they must not have understood the complexity of the system.
This is why Idaho Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter called a special session Wednesday to readdress the bill, which effectively costs the state approximately $46 million in federal funding as well as access to child support enforcement programs when it was voted down.
“We can hold people accountable and make them personally responsible for the children,” Otter said in his address to the legislature after he announced the special session. “We’ve got some work to do. If we had some problems in the past, we want to get those behind us, and I’m not going to sit around and waste a lot of time and energy on discussing what we didn’t do, because we’re going to focus on what we have to do.”
The session will be held May 18, where legislators are expected to pass the bill that failed last month.
“If the bill is not passed in the session, it’s going to be pretty significant,” Brandt said. “The federal government provides funds for the enforcement of child support and also for the child welfare system, conditioned on having our system work with other states and other countries so they can get enforcement. The federal government can withdraw all that funding if our law is not compliant.”
According to Brandt, the bill would allow child support payments to be enforced across state or international lines, and because of the cross-jurisdictional nature of the bill, every state and participating country has to adopt similar statutes under federal treaty. If the bill is not passed, it’s possible non-custodial parents residing in Idaho, 85 percent of whom already pay child support non-voluntarily, could not be forced to pay child support.
Idaho House Minority Leader Rep. John Rusche, D-Lewiston, said unless the legislature passes the bill, Idaho’s noncompliance would be felt most by single parents and the 150,000 Idaho children who depend on the system nationwide, as well as in Canada, England, Sweden, Germany and Australia.
“I think the bill will probably be passed fairly easily, because now people realize the consequences,” Rusche said.
Rusche said the bill was originally voted against to protect Idaho’s sovereignty — something that was impractical in this case, he said. Some legeslators cited a fear of Sharia law in Idaho if the measure passed.
“A number of legislators don’t like the federal government, or say they don’t and act like second graders — ‘You can’t be the boss of me,’ type behavior,” Rusche said.
Regardless of whether the bill is passed in the special session, Rusche said the session would still cost Idaho taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The decision has also inflicted another hit to Idaho’s reputation as the only state in the nation to not pass the bill, he said.
Rusche said his frustration is directed at the Republican supermajority in the Idaho legislature.
“One part is sure they’re always right because they have all the votes all the time,” Rusche said. “They never have to listen — I have heard it said that you legislate in haste and repent in leisure, and I think that’s kind of what we’re doing now.”
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @itshannah7