Cyber Beat

FLORIDA POSTS NAMES OF "DEADBEAT" PARENTS

The state of Florida has begun posting the names of parents who fail to make child support payments. Within the state there has been much controversy as to whether the state should publish the names in newspapers. Because of this, local newspapers would not publish the names. According to a recent article in the Sun- Sentinel, reported by staff writer Robert Nolin, the state has asserted that publishing the names will shame these people into paying up. The state is determined to announce names and therefore has posted about 10,000 of the names on the Internet. Will this result in more parents complying with payment orders? Only time will tell, but I doubt shame will be the cause if they do.

I have no data to support my claim, but it seems that mutual friends of the violator and the spouse could already be aware of the failure to pay. It's possible that the spouse of the violator has, already, loudly verbalized the issue. The spouse may have telephoned the violator's boss, called the police, called child advocacy agencies and the like. So quite a few people are already aware of the situation and still the payments have not been made.

Although there are millions of people with access to the Internet, I wonder how many will have an interest in "surfing" to that site for this type of information. Of course now that the availability of the site has been publicized, many will look out of curiosity. Once the curiosity has subsided, however, the general public could probably care less.

I am certainly not advocating that parents ordered to pay child support not be penalized in some fashion. However, is advertising these names on the Internet the solution? What purpose does it really serve? With the state asserting that having the names on an Internet site will shame violators into making payment, it seems that the purpose is politically motivated. rather than an attempt to resolve the problem.

I would surmise that if the state of Florida had taken the position, from the start, that it will publish these names on the Internet as part of an effort to provide public access to government records, perhaps the controversy would not have been so grandiose. By focusing the attention on providing the information to shame these individuals into paying, the state reaffirmed that political gratification was its only purpose.

Instead of announcing its desire to publish the names of these violators, the state could have advertised that the Department of Revenue maintains an Internet site (http://fcn.state.fl.us/dor/revenue.html). It could have lessened the political ramifications by stating that this site not only provides information about the tax policies of the state, but news and information about tax and revenue policies, information about the agency, as well as child support enforcement information and lists child support violators.

Whether or not taking this position would have resulted in less controversy over this issue , in my opinion, it would have appeared less politically motivated. Public records are available to the public. What's the difference as to the forum in which they are made public? Unless they are ordered sealed for purposes of public safety or other reasons, the record is public. There was no need to publicize its availability with a political twist.

Even with the perceived political motivations behind the state of Florida's decision to publish these names, it does seem that this is the beginning of true public access to government records. With few exceptions, if an individual wishes to obtain access to public records one must make the trek to the court or other government agency and conduct a search on that agency's database. Not only can the trip to the agency be time consuming, but the search itself can be. Because of this, thorough searches usually are made by companies, or individuals, who specialize in this endeavor. The private individual often cannot afford hiring someone to do this. However, with Internet access, searching public records becomes less of a chore and less expensive. The state of Florida may have actually set precedence, but it's marketing strategy created negative fallout that could have been avoided.

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