Deadbeat Parents Get The Message

Dr. Joe Bayard Miller Jr.’s reign as king of North Idaho’s deadbeat parents may be coming to an end - thanks to hard-nosed enforcement of a new law by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Last week, the Wallace doctor reacted promptly after the agency yanked his medical and driver’s licenses for overdue child-support payments - $25,250 to be exact. He couldn’t get to the department’s regional office fast enough to work out a payment plan and get his licenses back.

We hope Miller and other Idaho deadbeats - men and women whose various state licenses have been suspended this year - have found religion. Unpaid child support is the top reason in Idaho why families receive welfare.

Early returns indicate the new law, the cornerstone of Idaho’s 1996 welfare reform program, is an unqualified success. Already, child-support collections have jumped 8 percent statewide since Jan. 1 when the law went into effect.

Last month, the state began suspending state-issued licenses for parents who are two months or $2,000 behind. At the time, 11,000 parents owed $109 million. Since then, more than 140 deadbeat parents owing a combined $3 million in support have lost driving and other privileges.

Miller was the first doctor caught by the law. He can’t say he wasn’t warned. Like other deadbeats, he received two letters from the state - a general one last summer informing him about the new law and a specific one that told him how much he owed. Obviously, that didn’t make much of an impact. Miller, after all, has been to court several times and spent a weekend in jail for not making $1,000 monthly payments to care for his two teenage sons.

Miller has insisted all along that he can’t afford the payments - though he has several sources of income including his medical practice and found money in 1991 to buy a sailboat. In sentencing him to jail in 1995, 1st District Judge Gene Marano said: “I cannot imagine a person who has so little regard for his children that he basically thinks sailboat moorage fees are more important than his children.”

Amazingly, Miller and others seem to find the money when driving, hunting, fishing and other important privileges are at risk. In another case, a man who was $10,000 behind in child support offered to sell one of his show horses to avoid losing a driver’s license.

Such people prove that a stick works when the carrot is ignored.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board