The federal government now ranks Hawai'i last in the country in collecting child support payments from deadbeat parents.

The amount of money the Hawai'i Child Support Enforcement Agency failed to collect in 2005 was nearly $574 million, an increase of more than $40 million over 2003 levels, according to data from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.

Hawai'i collects on 41.36 percent of overdue accounts, putting the state at the bottom of the collection list, with the District of Columbia next-to-last at 43.68 percent, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett said the ranking is unfair and based on "irrelevant" statistics. The federal government determines eligibility for increased "incentive payments" to child support agencies based on improvements in their collection rates.

Bennett bristles at any mention of the worst-in-the-country collection rate on overdue accounts, saying it rewards agencies that skew their collection procedures to achieve artificial statistical goals. "Under this system, collecting one dollar each in 1,000 different cases (for a total of $1,000) results in far more incentive payments than collection of $1,000 in 100 different cases (for a total of $100,000)," he said.

Bennett said the child support agency qualifies for sizable federal incentive payments because the collection rate is more than 40 percent. Agencies under 40 percent don't receive any payments, he said.

In testimony to the Legislature this year, and in recent telephone interviews, Bennett aggressively defended the effectiveness of the state agency, saying that the collection rate for overdue payments is "irrelevant in any rational system."

Hawai'i is doing well despite its limited resources, Bennett said.

"Last year we distributed $83.58 million in child support," he said. "That is the 42nd highest total in the country and we are the 42nd state in terms of population."

Bennett said one obstacle to improving collection rates is a shortage of child support caseworkers.

The state agency has a full-time staff of 200 caseworkers, down from 215 last year. With 99,842 cases pending, it amounts to 499 cases each, which Bennett said is nearly 88 percent above the national average.

In 2003 and 2004, Hawai'i ranked last among all states in collecting unpaid child support, but was ahead of the District of Columbia, according to federal data.

NATIONAL TOTAL $106.6B

On the most recent list, the only other jurisdictions that collect money in fewer than half of the overdue accounts are Illinois (45.91 percent), Nevada (49.6 percent) and the Virgin Islands (49.96 percent). The national total last year of money owed in overdue accounts was a staggering $106.6 billion.

Bennett said he will not commit to changing the way the state tries to collect overdue support payments in order to improve the federal ranking and obtain "a couple of hundred thousand dollars more" in incentive payments.

"We're right where we want to be," he said. "There's certainly room for improvement; there always is. But we've made some really great strides in terms of customer service and in moneys that are collected and distributed," he said.

Debbie Kline, head of a national child support advocacy group called Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, said Bennett is using "fuzzy math" to try to obscure Hawai'i's low ranking in overdue collections.

"He should stop making excuses and improve the collection rate," Kline said.

ACES keeps its own collection rankings, which combine the number of cases in which collections are being made with the number of overdue cases.

By those calculations, Hawai'i was third worst in the country in 2004 (the most recent numbers available) with a collection rate of 31 percent. The District of Columbia was last on the ACES chart with a collection rate of just 19 percent. Also finishing lower than Hawai'i was Rhode Island at 30 percent.

Rhonda McShan, a divorced mother of three, said she was forced onto Hawai'i welfare rolls after her ex-husband stopped paying court-ordered child support for several years. Now McShan's ex-husband is paying current monthly child support, but she said she hasn't been able to collect nearly $18,000 that is still owed.

That's because, under the law, extra money he pays toward what is overdue first must go to the state to pay back welfare payments she collected. While on welfare, she said, she collected $750 per month in benefits — well below the $1,150 her ex-husband was supposed to be paying in monthly child support.

"I think he's paid all that (welfare) debt back, but every time I talk to them (the child support agency), they give me different numbers and different answers," McShan said.

Her former husband's lawyer, Edean Buffington, said, "I think in essence that that is correct. From our side, he's paying what he's supposed to be paying, but its been very confusing as to whether she's receiving what she's supposed to be receiving."

"I've been there so many times," Rhonda McShan said of visits to the agency office in Kapolei.

"It's so frustrating. At one point, they said I had forfeited my rights to back child support because I went on welfare. My welfare caseworker went with me to talk to them, but they wouldn't even talk to us," she said.

BARELY MAKING IT

McShan no longer receives welfare payments and works as a pastry chef. "I went to school and I got a degree in culinary arts and I got off welfare," she said.

But she's still barely making it financially and receiving even a small portion of the back child support owed by her ex-husband would be very helpful, she said. "I juggle and I struggle," said McShan.

Bennett said he couldn't discuss individual cases for privacy reasons but said the agency "follows the law" in collecting and distributing support payments that involve repayment of welfare benefits. And he said complaints about operations "are way down" this year in part because "a new customer call center is up and running."

He acknowledged there is "a problem with too many old collection cases on the books" but said a big reason is that Hawai'i, unlike other states around the country, can't write off old accounts in which minor amounts of money are owed or where collection efforts are clearly futile.

"We have cases going back 25 years that are still on the books," he said.

Last year Hawai'i made an unsuccessful attempt to "re-categorize" some 5,000 old accounts worth $11.8 million so that they no longer had to be reported as overdue accounts. Federal authorities balked "because Hawai'i law has no statute of limitations that governs collection actions by the state," Bennett said.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.