[ OUR OPINION ]
A sophisticated computer system installed four years ago was supposed to have significantly improved the state Child Support Enforcement Agency's distribution of payments, but problems have persisted. A state judge's order this week that the agency account for all uncashed checks and other payments not made is unlikely to solve the problem, but it should help shed light on the reasons and lead to improvements. State agency must
account for unpaid
child support
THE ISSUE A judge has ordered the state to account for all uncashed child-support checks.
Considerable progress has been made nationally in the past decade to track down deadbeat parents. Federal legislation established a tracking system that resulted in a sharply increased collection rate. State child-support agencies were required to install computer systems, and the federal government paid for 90 percent of the cost. Also, Congress made it a felony to cross state lines to avoid child-support obligations.
Before the computerized collection and disbursement system was installed, more than $800,000 in checks for child-support payments were mailed out by the Hawaii agency but not cashed, according to Circuit Judge Sabrina McKenna. Since then, the agency has sent out an additional $1 million in uncashed checks. The state estimates that unpaid child-support payments handled by the agency now total at least $3.5 million. The agency handles payments totaling about $100 million a year.
The state is required by state law to mail child-support payments within two days of being collected from parents' garnisheed paychecks. Attorneys for child-support recipients in a class-action lawsuit maintained that the agency has been weeks or months late in sending out payments, which they alleged amounted to $9 million. McKenna ruled that the agency had complied with the two-day requirement in the "overwhelming majority" of cases.
The judge has ordered the agency to compile alphabetical and chronological lists of the names of custodial parents who were supposed to receive child-custody checks, including names, check dates and check numbers. She ruled that the state has a fiduciary duty to the custodial and noncustodial parents and the children.
Most of the uncashed checks may have been sent to wrong addresses. That leaves the questions of whether they were returned to the agency and, if so, what further efforts were made to find the intended recipients. Plaintiffs' attorneys accused the agency of keeping the money in an interest-building "slush fund" vulnerable to theft, fraud or misuse. The judge's order should be a first step toward answering those questions.
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MORE than a year has passed since the terrorist attacks on America's East Coast, but the backlash against Muslim Americans has not abated. The latest slam was the tossing of anti-Muslim leaflets into the fenced yard of the Islamic Center in Manoa. Hawaii's reputed ethnic and religious harmony provides no refuge from this despicable kind of collateral damage in the war against terrorism. Strong probe needed
to find hate mongers
THE ISSUE Authorities are investigating the source of anti-Muslim leaflets at a Manoa mosque.
The FBI and Honolulu police have begun an investigation into the Manoa hate crime. An aggressive effort is needed to identify and prosecute the leaflet-throwers and create confidence in the government's stance against misguided harassment.
The leaflets warned "rag-heads" that "every curry fund-raiser will be checked to ensure that funds are not being funneled to support terrorist groups. Anyone found in violation will be strapped with explosives and shipped to Iraq." In capital letters, it closed, "May God (not Alah) bless America." Allah was misspelled.
Muslims in America have had to endure excessive harassment because of the terrorist attacks, not only from other Americans but from the U.S. government as it has struggled to define boundaries in the war on terror. More than 1,000 unidentified terrorism suspects, most of them with ties to the Middle East, have been detained by federal authorities. Noncitizens have been tried for terrorism-related offenses in military tribunals.
"The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country and around the world are peaceful, law-abiding citizens," FBI Director Robert Mueller said in a speech last week at Stanford University. "A small number of Muslims, however, are members of radical fundamentalist sects sworn to the destruction of the United States. This presents a dilemma for those charged with protecting against the attack."
A recent poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that 57 percent of Muslims living in the United States had been targets of racial abuse in the past year, and 87 percent indicated they knew someone who had been targeted. More than 2,000 hate incidents against Muslims have occurred in the past year, according to the council.
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