5 February 2003

Subject: Vote NO on proposed Senate Bill 1312

Dear Virginia Legislators:

I urge you to vote NO on proposed Senate Bill 1312, which is nothing more than a clone of HB 2261 and 2263 that proposed an increase in presumptive child support guidelines and was passed by indefinitely by the House last week.

The Virginia Triennial Guideline review process has been nothing more than a façade to meet federal regulations. It lacks independence, objectivity, expertise, and due diligence.

I followed the panel from start to finish, attended almost every meeting, which is more than I can say for most of the panel members. I have read every document from past panels as well as the current. And I have researched most other sources regarding the fundamental economics – or lack there of in arriving at the child support guidelines. What I discovered is appalling.

Second, in the words of Dr. Stephen Baskerville " the review panel is selected by the director of the state’s Division of Child Support Enforcement ( DCSE ), and the majority of the members derive there income from the divorce system: judges, lawyers, a feminist, an enforcement official, two custodial parents, and a legislator. All these people have a stake in encouraging divorce and criminalizing fathers and therefore in making child support as onerous as possible. By virtue of the Director of DCSE deciding its make-up, conflict of interest concerns are both evident and also reflective of much larger improprieties".

Third, the majority of the members of this panel are not properly qualified by education, background, and experience to accurately access the economic and financial intricacies of the guidelines. A similar criticism was made by Judge Perkins in his findings that the Georgia child support guidelines were unconstitutional. Certainly there is a place for these members on the panel, but would it make sense to have economists, accountants, and finance professionals evaluating laws? Of course not, so why does the State of Virginia think it makes sense for non-finance professionals to evaluate the economic and financial intricacies of the guidelines. They have admitted that they don’t know or understand what makes up the guidelines, and I have personally witness them struggle with simple tax concepts and application thereof within the guidelines, even after presentations by a CPA and an economist from Georgia. I also wrote a letter to the panel bringing to light the misapplication of the tax effects as addressed by the economist, but it was totally ignored.

Fourth, the panel voted against defining "child support" thereby making it harder for the guidelines to be rebutted at trial. It is bad enough that the current factors available for rebuttal are merely window dressing for the guidelines. Judges rarely deviate from the presumption, even with expert economic testimony that the guidelines are too high in a particular instance. So, how does one rebut the guidelines? They can’t!

It was clear from the outset that panel chairman had a special agenda and that he would cleverly help maneuver the panel to meet it.

At the outset of the review panel, I presented information to the Chairman regarding the Georgia court case, which declared the guidelines unconstitutional, based on the expert testimony and presentation of R. Mark Rogers. Some of which he distributed. But that case and the information soon became the but end of the jokes in which some lawyers and judges on the panel made a mockery of the judge and his decision. They will argue that that case is irrelevant, because Georgia guidelines are based on percent of obligor guidelines and not the income share guidelines in Virginia. However, I also provided them with a comparison of the "Findings of Fact" in the GA case and how 90% of those findings also apply to Income Shares.

It was clear that the Chairman was trying to help the panel steer clear of R. Mark Rogers, by complaining there was no money in the budget to pay to bring in experts. However, he soon discovered that I was in it for the long haul and would not let this panel operate in secrecy from the public this time. I questioned the Chairman and his liaison whether the public could get access to the tapes that were being made of the panel meetings. At first I was told that I could come in and listen to the tapes but could not make copies. Then I asked whether the public was allowed to record and/or videotape the meeting. The liaison told me that I could record the meetings but the Chairman did not want them video-ed. I rephrased my question and asked whether it was illegal or if he had the authority to prevent me from videoing the meetings. I got the same response. After doing some research I learned that I had every right to record the meeting through audio and/or video and allowed copies of the tapes made by the panel under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. As I confronted Joseph Crane and Bill Brownfield at one of the meetings, their tuned changed somewhat and Mr. Brownfield made a comment that they just had a class on the VA Freedom of Information Act that week, and agreed that they could duplicate their tapes at cost to me. However, Joseph Crane continued to refuse to allow me to video tape the meetings saying that these people were not paid to be here, and he did not want me to video it, that it would cause to much of a disturbance, and that if I tried he would throw me out. Are these acts of a panel that has nothing to hide?

So the panel chair cleverly avoided using him to update the current tables using the excuse that they should use someone in state. Their first choice Dr. John Knapp from UVA said that he would not have enough time, so then they enlisted Dr. William M Rodgers III from William and Mary. However, he was given little time and the whole process was rushed and I dare say anyone on that panel could tell you how the numbers were derived or even if they made sense. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he proposed higher guidelines, and that is what they wanted to hear. How does a panel that is suppose to be exercising due diligence accept this at face value when experts from past panels, another an expert, R. Mark Rogers (with years of experience in this area) from the current panel said just the opposite, and when the overwhelming majority of the citizens complained that the guidelines were forcing them into poverty at the initial phase of the review process during the public comment period.

How can a panel be exercising due diligence, by accepting these guidelines and proposing legislation based on them, affecting the lives of hundreds of thousand or even millions of citizens in Virginia, potentially pushing more of them into poverty or jail without even doing an after child support, after tax impact study? That is one of their tricks, they try to push through legislation and higher guidelines by just focusing on the base table, and minimizing the additional add ons which make the support hundreds of dollars higher, and taxes. Does the panel ever take real cases and real numbers to evaluate what the impact these guidelines have in real terms? NO, because that would expose what so many non-custodial parents of whom an overwhelmingly majority are men have been complaining about for years.

The panel will argue that they spent 14 months reviewing the guidelines in an effort to spin perception in their favor. However, in reality 14 months only representing the time between the first meeting and the last. The panel only met about 8 times, the majority of which usually ended after lunch due to the fact they no longer had a quorum.

Chase Shifflett

Along with members of the VA Family Law Reform Coalition & Fathers For Virginia