By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

THE Office of the Public Auditor has found various discrepancies in child support collections made by the Office of the Attorney General’s Child Support Enforcement Program.
In a follow-up report of its OAG Child Support Enforcement Program Performance Audit, OPA found out that deficiencies identified in prior audits have remained unaddressed.
The follow-up review covered the 39 months from April 1, 2003 through June 30, 2006.
Under this period, a number of upgrades have been initiated such as the OAG’s Absent Parent Automated System Information system, which achieved federal certification under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in April 2004.
OAG also implemented the Kids First Card debit card, Amnesty, and Passport programs, as well as the quarterly publication of non-custodial parents delinquency and unlocatable parents lists.
However, OPA said some undistributed collections are still not reconciled.
For instance, in September 2005, the Department of Administration reported undistributed collections of $6.5 million, while the APASI system reported $2.5 million, and the child support bank account had a balance of $2.8 million.
According to OPA, no reconciliations of these accounts were performed during the scope period of its review and these three sets of records should reconcile to the same amounts.
In addition, DOA’s AS400 system reported that undistributed child support collections increased from $5.5 million in FY 2003 to $6.5 million in FY 2005, while OAG’s APASI system reported that the amount decreased from $5.4 million in FY 2003 to $2.5 million in FY 2005.
The public auditor attributed the reduction of approximately $3 million in the APASI system to a write-off by OAG, which was not communicated to DOA.
OPA also reported that its audit team counted 1,939 stale-dated and un-disbursed checks totaling $448,708, most of which have not been processed in the APASI system.
After OPA’s count, another box was found with an undetermined number of checks, which, when counted and processed, may increase the reported amounts of undistributed collections in the APASI system.
Furthermore, OPA said collection efforts and monitoring did not result in significant decreases in arrearages.
Despite implementation of the upgrade programs, OPA said arrearages decreased by only 1.66 percent or $1.6 million over a two-year period from $96.4 million in FY 2003 to $94.8 million in FY 2005.