Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, Child Support Advisory Committee met Feb. 21.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
Committee Members Present via WebEx/Phone:
Darryl Apperton, Maggie Bennett, Howard Feldman, Geraldine Franco, Dr. Kirk Harris, Juanita Sanders and LaTanya Law (for Secretary Grace Hou), Niya Kelly, Elizabeth Lingle, The Honorable Judge Pamela Loza, Christina Mahoney, Samuel Williams, Jr. (for The Honorable Iris Y. Martinez), The Honorable Judge Amy McFarland, Nicole McKinnon, The Honorable Judge Alana Mejias, Jessica Patchik, Christine Raffaele, The Honorable Judge Regina Scannicchio, Vickie Smith, The Honorable Judge Alicia Washington, Richard Zuckerman
Committee Members Absent:
Trent Cameron, The Honorable Grace Dickler, The Honorable La Shawn Ford, Phillip Mohr, Chlece Walker-Neal-Murray
HFS Staff Present:
Carrie Benson, Irene Curran, Patricia Dulin, Hilary Johns Felton, Gina Hemphill, Allen Nosler, Daun Perino, Steve Sharer, Christine Towles, Bryan Tribble, Eric Watson
Public Guests:
None
• Welcome CSAC members – Bryan Tribble
• Roll Call of Committee Members – Gina Hemphill
• Introduction of New Committee Members and State Employees – Bryan Tribble
➢ Introduction of six new members
o The Honorable Amy McFarland
o Chlece Walker-Neal-Murray
o The Honorable Grace Dickler
o The Honorable Regina Scannicchio
o Niya Kelly
o The Honorable Alicia Washington
➢ Introduction of state employees
• Election of 2023 CSAC Chairperson – Bryan Tribble
➢ Maggie Bennett nominated Richard Zuckerman
o Seconded by Judge Pamela Loza, passed by voice vote unanimously.
o Richard Zuckerman has been elected the Chairperson for the 2023 Child Support Advisory Committee.
o Richard thanked everyone and welcomed new members.
• Approval of December 19, 2022, meeting notes – Richard Zuckerman
o Motion to approve – Maggie
o Seconded by Jessica, passed by voice vote unanimously.
• Legislation – Bryan Tribble
➢ Legislation that passed at the end of the 102nd General Assembly Public Act 102-1115 (p.55 and 174)
o Effects how Pass Thru works in Illinois.
o Effective July 1, 2024.
o All collected child support will be sent out to the parents. The state will no longer retain child support when the parents are receiving temporary assistance for needy families (TANF).
o The previous practice of parents signing their rights of support for receiving assistance was ended retroactively on January 1st of this year.
o Bryan turned it over to the group for questions.
▪ Are you able to share that ruling with us Bryan? – LaTanya (see above link)
▪ Will you have (later) the rules on how it will be budgeted? – Juanita
▪ Yes, we will be working with your agency Juanita to work through all the details – Bryan
➢ Current Legislative Session – Richard
o Bills introduced in the Senate that will have some impact on child support.
▪ Senate Bill 178 - requires a certain notice be given in court to all payors.
▪ House Bill 1486 - would not allow any interest to be charged on unpaid child support. Currently interest is charged on any unpaid child support payments past 30 days.
▪ House Bill 2330 - part of a large Bill introduced by the Illinois State Bar Association. Incarceration would not be considered voluntary unemployment for imputation of income purposes.
▪ House Bill 3404 - it requires that child support calculation become part of damages in a DUI case and part of the penalties being paid by the person that committed the DUI where there has been a death. This Bill didn’t previously get anywhere.
▪ House Bill 3465 – would allow the SDU to expand the electronic funds transfer provisions to the SDU.
o Our next meeting is April 10th. The deadline for the House to have Bills out of the House is March 24th and the Senate is March 30th. We will know by our next meeting what Bills made it past the 1st, finish line and crossed over to the other side of the Chamber.
• COVID-19 and Public Health Emergency Ending May 11, 2023 – Bryan Tribble
➢ Additional Information: SAP - H.R. 382 H.J. Res. 7 (whitehouse.gov)
➢ This will change the Stafford Act flexibilities, which aside from the extra time to be able to conduct the Quadrennial review in the COVID environment, we didn’t need any of the flexibility. Now the flexibilities are going away.
➢ We are in the process of making all other aspects of our business open.
➢ We will maintain some of the good things we did get out of the pandemic, such as getting together virtually vs. traveling to Chicago or Springfield.
➢ We were able to hold all the 27 Town Hall meetings virtually.
➢ FMAP step down each quarter of the 2023 calendar year until it is back to pre-pandemic rates.
➢ We will not be going back to the live meetings, is this correct? – Richard.
➢ From an HFS standpoint, this is working really well, and were not losing a full day when factoring in travel. Maybe there is a mix, maybe not. There were some changes made to the Open Meetings Act to allow for these types of meetings – Bryan.
➢ There are a couple of pieces of Legislation regarding the open meetings, both in the House and the Senate and there may end up being something that consolidates them with the public health emergency ending. Some of the Social Services advocates are pushing for a broader look at it – Niya.
➢ Thank you, Niya, do you have either one of those Bill numbers? – Bryan. I will put them in the chat. – Niya.
• Child Support Services Performance for FFY2022 – Bryan Tribble
➢ Our establishment of parentage, a statewide metric, has to be reached at a 90% rate or greater annually and for the last couple of years despite the pandemic and we’ve being doing that, we were just over 91% this past year.
➢ The other metrics are establishment of support orders on open cases. This has also gone up over the last couple of years.
➢ Collection on arrears and collection on current support, we saw a huge uptick in both of these metrics related to some of the COVID related pieces such as the extension of unemployment insurance benefits to individuals who would have not ordinarily have been eligible. We spent most of Federal Fiscal Year 2022 doing a root cause after that ended in August of 2021.
➢ What we expected to see was what we had seen any other time when there was an extension of unemployment benefits and that is within 60 to 90 days after someone stops receiving unemployment benefits, we could see those individuals entering back into the work force. This was the first time historically; this did not happen. We started doing a root cause and what we saw was a real emergence of what has been going on for quite some time. We saw a tipping point with private contractors and gig economy workers to where they were occurring in such a large number it was able to be seen in the data. As we looked at the laws and rules on the books in Illinois, other states have already faced this issue. In Illinois there’s no reporting requirements for individuals who are private contractors. The pending Senate Bill 747 would requirement for reporting for private contractors and close this loophole which would allow income withholding to be effectuated against the earnings that private contract individuals have today. The rate of payment within those cases within 30, 60, or 90 days is less than a third of what it is for individuals for whom we have an active employer. It is a huge gap. The fifth Federal measure is over all cost effectiveness traditionally for every dollar that is invested in the program. There is a return on that investment to the State of Illinois of just over 5 dollars. With us moving further into the development of our new system EPIC, that number is starting to come down. At the next meeting there will be some comparative data that looks at Illinois vs. other states.
• Quadrennial Review – Bryan Tribble
➢ The Quadrennial Review was published to the website.
ILLINOIS CHILD SUPPORT GUIDELINES QUADRENNIAL REVIEW REPORT, 2022
➢ The public input section that we submitted was the most robust public input by any state and will serve as a model going forward.
➢ Bryan thanked the group for their hard work.
➢ Dr. Kirk Harris, Maggie Bennett, Richard Zuckerman and Judge Pamela Loza thanked Bryan for his leadership.
➢ To help the public better understand some of the things talked about, we are developing a suite of You Tube videos they can access on our You Tube channel. This may make them better understand. This is in its infancy. We have one video out there and the second one is on its way. We will create one video every month until we have covered all the topics.
• Work Arising from the completed Quadrennial Review – Bryan Tribble
➢ The work that has been completed and published, that are on HFS’s website, were all updated, that includes the income shares material, calculators/estimators, effective February 10th.
➢ These changes include the transition of the schedule of basic child support obligation from BR-4 to BR-5 model. That model was cost adjusted through 10/2022.
➢ The schedule had the top end lowered from $30 thousand to $25 thousand. ➢ The Gross to Net chart was updated for the 2023 tax year and all of the materials were updated to the 2023 federal poverty level. For 2023 the level for a single person is $14,580, making our 75%, which is the level that is the $40 per month per child capped at $120 so that 75%-dollar amount is now $10,935. The 133% which is used for the medical support determination is now $19,391.
➢ From the HFS side, we’ve done all of our calculations prior to making the referral to our attorneys. Bryan turned it over to Jessica, Liz and Christine to speak on what this is looking like from a practical application standpoint.
o Liz stated that this came up last week. One of my staff ran a calculation before the new tables were published and then she ran it again after they were published. The end result was $105 more to be paid than before the new tables. She first thought there was a glitch in the table. There is no glitch. My direction to the attorney was if you are going to court now, you use the tables that are in effect now. Jessica agreed with Liz.
▪ Howard asked Richard if he knew the support calculations have adopted the new schedules.
▪ Bryan stated that the same day, every year we make any changes, we coordinate with both family law software and Thompson Reuters.
➢ Bryan stated that during the Quadrennial Review we discussed possible formations of workgroups to continue the study of the below items. He asked for everyone’s opinions on this.
▪ Imputation of Income
• The Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement has requested the States focus on this.
▪ Incarcerated Obligors
• Maggie and Daryl said that The Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement has given us suggestions, this needs to be addressed. Jessica feels strongly about incarceration and volunteered to be on this work group.
▪ Shared Parenting
• Maggie stated that this has been problematic since the inception of Income Shares, so we do need to work on that. Howard mentioned this being problematic and volunteered to be in this work group. Judge Amy McFarland volunteered to work in this group as well.
▪ Self-Support Reserve and Minimum Child Support Orders
• Maggie stated that there has been some confusion on this.
▪ Richard stated that you can send emails to Bryan or he if you don’t know what group you would like to join.
• Formation of the Community Child Support Advisory Council – Bryan Tribble
➢ Along with the workgroups, there will be an opportunity to work on this.
➢ This council will allow parents to have a voice in the Policies and processes of the department. HFS is very committed to opening up dialog with the families we serve. Making it a partnership.
➢ Eric Watson is to take the lead on the HFS side and Dr. Harris will work with Eric and anyone else who is interested.
• Old/New Business
➢ Old Business:
No old business
➢ New Business:
No new business
• Public Comments
None
• Richard thanked everyone for coming and stated that the next meeting is April 11th at 1:30 pm.
• Motion to adjourn approved by the group.
https://hfs.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/hfs/sitecollectiondocuments/February212023CSACNotes.pdf
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