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Efficient and Effective? The Texas OAG's child support
collection efforts are today among nation's more efficient collecting
$5.41 for every program dollar spent, thirteenth best among the states.
Nevertheless, child support in arrears in Texas swelled with the case
load to nearly $9 billion by 2002, compounded annually by large numbers
of young and incarcerated parents in the system and by 12% interest
levied by Texas law on unpaid child support. Efficiency increased with
national welfare reform in 1996 which dramatically reduced the number of
welfare cases in the system. At the same time the OAG embarked on a
massive automation effort to speed the collection and dissemination of
information, expand administrative income (employer) withholding, and
facilitate imposition of increasingly tough sanctions including the
threat of driver's, hunting and fishing, and professional license
revocation.
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