AUGUSTA – With many young Mainers turning to cell phones as their only phone, Sen. Deborah Plowman, R-Hampden, is proposing legislation to allow the state to get the numbers and addresses of cell-phone customers who are not paying their child support.
“Technology changes will always be ahead of state government,” Plowman said. “It moves in light-years, and we move at a snail’s pace.”
The latest trend is the growing number of Mainers, mostly young if national studies are correct, who use their cell phone as their only phone. While traditional phones have well-established listings where state investigators can look up a phone number, the same isn’t true of cell phones. As of December 2004, there were more than 660,000 cell phone subscribers in Maine.
“We’ll be asking for a match, just like we do with banks, so that the state can get an address for the person, the billing address for the cell phone,” Plowman said.
Steve Hussey, director of the Division of Support Enforcement & Recovery, said he hadn’t seen Plowman’s proposal but that he would support it because it would provide one more tool to collect from parents who aren’t paying child support.
“I will definitely be in support of this,” he said. “I think this will be a good source of information.”
Hussey said other states have had success in tracking down delinquent parents using their cell phone number or billing address.
“In the commonwealth of Virginia, they have been subpoenaing the individual cell (phone) companies to get a person’s number and address,” he said.” I think a computer match is a better way to do this, more effective.”
Hussey said the state uses computer matches in a number of ways. For example, he said, his agency gets the “new hires” list from the Department of Labor and is able to match it with its list of delinquent parents. The state then has the power to have payments deducted from a person’s paycheck if the person continues to refuse to pay child support.
Joe Farren, director of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, the national trade group for the cell phone industry, said the group could not comment on Plowman’s proposal until it sees a printed bill. He did suggest that the legislation may not be needed.
“The subpoena process has worked very well for several years,” he said. “Other states are using it to get this information.”
Maine now uses many tools to get child support payments. Both federal and state income tax refunds can be diverted, and various licenses, both professional and business, can be suspended until payments are made.
Last year, the state collected more than $107 million. Hussey estimates about $70 million of that total went to parents who would have needed state aid without the payments. He said his agency estimates it collects 90 percent of what is owed.
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