First Regular Session

Sixty-first General Assembly

LLS NO. R97@0747.01 JGG

STATE OF COLORADO

BY REPRESENTATIVES McPherson, Adkins, George, Kaufman, Pfiffner, and T. Williams;

also SENATORS Lacy, B. Alexander, Ament, Coffman, Congrove, and Schroeder.

JUDICIARY

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 97-1027

WHEREAS, The federal "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996", Public Law 104­193, herein referred to as the "Act", was passed by the United States House of Representatives on July 18, 1996, and the United States Senate on July 23, 1996, and signed into law by President Clinton on August 22, 1996; and

WHEREAS, Article III of such Act addresses the several states' obligation to provide child support enforcement services and mandates that the states adopt certain procedures for the location of an obligor and the establishment, modification, and enforcement of a child support obligation against such obligor; and

WHEREAS, The members of the Sixty­first General Assembly recognize the importance of assuring financial support for minor and dependent children; however, the General Assembly finds that those procedures specified in the Act include such far­reaching measures as the following:

(1) The necessity to implement the "Uniform Interstate Family Support Act", as approved by the American Bar Association and as amended by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which uniform act allows for the direct registration of foreign support orders and the activation of income­withholding procedures across state lines without any prior verification, certification, or other authentication that the child support order or the income­withholding form is accurate or valid and without a requirement that notice of such withholding be provided to the alleged obligor by any specified means or method, such as by first­class mail or personal service, to assure that the individual receives proper notice prior to the income­withholding;

(2) Liens to arise by operation of law against real and personal property for amounts of overdue support that are owed by a noncustodial parent who resides or owns property in the state, without the ability to determine if a lien exists on certain property;

(3) The obligation of the state to accord full faith and credit to such liens arising by operation of law in any other state, which results in inadequate notice and the inability of purchasers to have knowledge or notice of such liens;

(4) A duty placed upon employers to report all newly hired employees, whether or not the employee has a child support obligation, to a state directory of new hires within a restricted period of time after the employer hires the employee;

(5) The requirement that social security numbers be recorded when a person applies for a professional license, a commercial driver's license, an occupational license, or a marriage license, when a person is subject to a divorce decree, a support order, or a paternity determination or acknowledgment, or when an individual dies, whether or not the person has an obligation to pay child support;

(6) A requirement that the child support enforcement agency enter into agreements with financial institutions doing business in the state in order to develop, operate, and coordinate an unprecedented and invasive data match system for the sharing of account holder information with the child support enforcement agency in order to facilitate the potential matching of delinquent obligors and bank account holders;

(7) Procedures by which the state child support enforcement agency may subpoena financial or other information needed to establish, modify, or enforce a support order and to impose penalties for failure to respond to such a subpoena and procedures by which to access information contained in certain records, including the records of public utilities and cable television companies pursuant to an administrative subpoena; and

(8) Procedures interfering with the states' right to determine when a jury trial is to be authorized; and

WHEREAS, The Act mandates numerous, unnecessary requirements upon the several states that epitomize the continuing trend of intrusion by government into people's personal lives; and

WHEREAS, The Act offends the notion of notice and opportunity to be heard guaranteed to the people by the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, The Act offends the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which provides that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS, The Act imposes upon the several states further insufficiently funded mandates in relation to the costly development of procedures by which to implement the requirements set forth in the Act in order to preserve the receipt of federal funds under Title IV­D of the "Social Security Act", as amended, and other provisions of the Act; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Sixty­first General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the Senate concurring herein:

That we, the members of the Sixty­first General Assembly, urge the Congress of the United States to amend or repeal those specific provisions of the federal "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996" set forth in this Resolution that place undue burden and expense upon the several states, that violate provisions of the Constitution of the United States, that impose insufficiently funded mandates upon the states in the establishment, modification, and enforcement of child support obligations, or that unjustifiably intrude into the personal lives of the law­abiding citizens of the United States of America.

Be It Further Resolved, That copies of this Resolution be sent to the President of the United States, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate of each state legislature, and Colorado's Congressional delegation.