How long will Kane County cover state child support costs?
The waiting game for the state to pay one of its larger debts to Kane County began anew this week. The county board put local taxpayers on the hook for funding child support enforcement efforts by the state's attorney's office. The decision may be a precursor to taking on the debt permanently.
County taxpayers already fronted one year of child support collection efforts. That $655,000 bill to the state is still outstanding. The unanimous board decision this week will double that amount come June 30, 2017.
County attorneys are researching a lawsuit against the state to force payment. Barring a successful outcome, there may be no real incentive for the state to ever pay. Kane County Chief Judge Susan Clancy Boles envisioned a no-win situation for the county.
If county officials shut down the state's attorney's child support wing, the enforcement duties fall back to the state. Boles said that scenario has a poor track record. The backlog of child support cases would jump from the current level of 7,230 to more than 12,000 in just one year. That's the bad news for parents who rely on child support money. The bad news for local taxpayers would be a bill for increased staffing costs at the county courthouse.
Boles said she'd need two more courtrooms to handle the backlog. That means more costs for judges, paralegals, clerks and court security. The county would also need more law library staff members. Boles expects a flood of parents representing themselves in court.
She didn't attach an annual dollar figure to those costs, but Boles made it clear there would be financial and moral costs associated with ending the county's child support collection efforts. County board members showed they understood both those costs and the political ramifications tied to making life harder on struggling parents.
"This does seem like an emergent situation," board member Monica Silva said. "It's incumbent on us to save our constituency, especially single parents, from a very negative situation."
Board member Cristina Castro said it is difficult to make any decision to bail out the state, but there seems to be no real alternatives.
"It does not excuse that our state is a complete mess, but it is a very important program," Castro said. "If we don't fund this it's going to create complete chaos in our courts as well."
Board member Doug Scheflow was more hesitant to incur the child support costs.
"My concern would be Springfield bringing Kane County down," he said. "Their failures are not going to become our failures. Are we going to say we are going to make no change in the program and just on faith hope that Springfield works itself out?"
The county's child support efforts yielded about $26 million for local parents last year. The majority of the board saw that as a good return on their investment of $655,000 in annual costs. However, the board faces a 2017 budget that forecasts expenses far outpacing income. The board may tap into a $2 million special reserve fund for the first time. The board created the fund to keep the county's frozen property tax levy in place as long as possible.