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Child support reboot?

JEFF SELLE/jselle@cdapress.com | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 years, 8 months AGO
by JEFF SELLE/jselle@cdapress.com
| April 29, 2015 9:00 PM

COEUR d'ALENE - Gov. Butch Otter will hold a press conference this morning to announce what he plans to do about Idaho's potentially broken child support program.

The governor is likely to announce whether or not he will call a special legislative session to deal with it.

The child support program was put in jeopardy earlier this month when the Legislature decided to table SB 1067, which would have amended Idaho's current child support laws to make it easier to collect payments from non-custodial parents who move overseas.

Lawmakers were told that all 50 states had to pass the legislation without amendments in order to comply with a treaty that was negotiated during the Hauge Convention 2007.

Nine lawmakers in the House were concerned the bill would subject Idaho's court system to foreign laws, and voted to table the bill during the last day of the legislative session.

By refusing to pass the amendment, Idaho will no longer be able to use the federal Child Support System on which it relies to track non-custodial parents in other states and collect delinquent child support payments.

If the bill is not addressed by the end of June, the state will also lose a $16 million federal grant that is used to fund the state's child support enforcement program and another $30 million grant designed to help low-income families with things like daycare assistance.

If the governor calls for a special session, a new bill will be introduced and work its way through the legislative process to become law.

Local legislators said they suspect the governor will call the session, and that a new bill which addresses their foreign law concerns will be introduced.

Rep. Kathy Sims, R-Coeur d'Alene, is one of the nine legislators who voted to kill the original bill, but she is reserving judgment on a new bill until she sees its contents.

"Nobody has seen the amendments yet," Sims said on Tuesday. "It will be a whole new bill and whole new ball game."

She said initially lawmakers were told the bill could not be amended, but now she has been told that the bill "can be and will be amended."

Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d'Alene, said he has heard there are amendments, but he hasn't seen them either.

Malek didn't get a chance to vote for the bill because it never made it to the House floor.

Malek said any amendments to a new bill have to be vetted through the national Uniform Law Commission, which Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis sits on with four other Idahoans.

Malek said Davis, R-Idaho Falls, is also crafting the bill that will likely go before the special session if it is called.

"It'll start in either a House or Senate committee and then work its way to the other chamber," Malek said.

Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d'Alene, voted for the bill along with a unanimous Senate, but said she was always a bit uneasy about the bill.

"I made the motion to hold the bill for more information when it came before our committee," she said. "We all had concerns about the bill, including the chairman Bart Davis, and they couldn't answer our questions."

She said staff from the Department of Health and Welfare did return to the committee to answer enough questions to get the bill moving again, but even then, Souza said, the answers were still a bit inadequate.

"But we weren't willing to hold up the process any longer," Souza said.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously, but when it got to the House, Souza said, it obviously had more questions that couldn't be answered so legislators tabled the bill.

"At the time, that is what the committee had to do," she said. "It's an important issue, but it's also important to get it right."

Several local legislators said despite what they were told, they have since learned that the states of Washington and Wyoming did amend their laws to comply with the international treaty.

Souza said she has also been told that Alaska ended its legislative session without addressing the amendment. Idaho lawmakers have been told that if one state fails to pass the legislation, it would tank the whole international treaty.

Rep. Ron Mendive, R-Post Falls, said there is a lot of misinformation floating around, and the way this treaty is being handled concerns him.

"It's my understanding that every state has to pass this to ratify the treaty," he said. "At first we were told the U.S. Senate ratified it, but it turns out they didn't. I have never heard of the states ratifying a treaty this way."

However, Mendive said if the original bill is amended, he is willing to take another look at it but he is going to do it cautiously.

"Treaties are such a big deal. We need to treat this carefully," he said. "This is certainly not something to be taken lightly."

Rep. Eric Redman, R-Athol, said if the bill isn't amended to address lawmakers' concerns, he is going to side with the nine who voted to kill the original bill.

"I still have some concerns with treaties," Redman said. "I guess we will see where this goes when we get down there, and it does look like we are going back down there based on everything I have heard."

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