Parents Who Miss Payments Would Lose Licenses

Parents who miss child support payments would get their licenses revoked under a bill overwhelmingly approved by the Senate on Tuesday.

The Senate voted to suspend all state-issued licenses for habitual nonpayment of child support or failure to comply with child visitation orders.

Ratification of the major piece of Gov. Phil Batt’s welfare reform program came over reservations from several lawmakers that the bill could affect something southern Idahoans hold most dear: permits for water rights.

The legislation would restrict all licenses and permits, from driver’s licenses to hunting, fishing, occupational and business licenses, and other state permits and authorizations. The license suspension penalty, effective Jan. 1, 1997, would be triggered if a parent falls three months or $2,000 behind in child support payments.

Supporters said the law has proven highly effective in other states, prompting parents to pay up and resulting in few actual suspensions.

Self-employed parents who otherwise are hard to go after respond to this tactic, said Sen. Mary Lou Reed, D-Coeur d’Alene, who co-sponsored the bill along with Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden, and two other senators.

Parents who agree to payment plans or otherwise cooperate wouldn’t get their licenses suspended, Reed and Crow said.

Health and Welfare Director Linda Caballero has said that failure to receive court-ordered child support is the No. 1 reason children and custodial parents, primarily women, go on welfare.

But senators such as Laird Noh of Kimberly, chairman of the Senate Resources and Environment Committee, worried about the water rights issue.

Senate Health and Welfare Committee Chairman Grant Ipsen, R-Boise, said he would look into the matter. The bill was sent to the House on a 26-8 vote.

The Senate also unanimously sent to the House another piece of the welfare reform package. It would make it a crime for anyone to help a spouse conceal assets to avoid support payments.

Ipsen said there are 12,000 parents of Idaho children at least $2,000 in arrears.

Getting them paid up, he said, would ease demand for welfare assistance by $24 million.

“We’re one of the few states left that has not passed such a law,” he said.

, DataTimes