Perspective: Help parents pay child support

Florida lawmakers passed a bill this session ratcheting up criminal penalties against parents who fail to pay child support. Providing for one's children is serious business, and imprisonment may be an appropriate last resort for monied parents who intentionally and repeatedly flout their obligations. But many parents are deadbeat because they are dead broke. Instead of throwing these parents in jail, authorities would accomplish more -- for the state and for children -- by helping them land in a job.

The Non-Custodial Parent Employment Program was set up to do just that. Started in the Tampa Bay area in 1996, it has grown to nine Florida counties and is one of the largest programs in the nation for unemployed non-custodial parents of children on welfare. Independent audits show that the program, run by Gulf Coast Community Care, is successful in recouping dollars and in rebuilding lives.

Florida lawmakers this session rightly earmarked $750,000 for the program, and it deserves Gov. Jeb Bush's support as he reviews the final legislative budget. The modest appropriation represents only a small fraction of the revenues the program collects as well as of the long-term earning power it seeds in delinquent parents. It gives those parents the hope and help they need to pay what's due -- two commodities never so important now that they may be treated as felons when they don't.

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