Ohio SB 292 would have raised child support levels in the face of the worst economy since the Great Depression. Working with Fathers and Families, our supporters wrote and lobbied legislators to oppose the bill.
Why This Campaign
Led by Fathers and Families’ Donald Hubin, Ph.D., we fought against SB 292. While the bill does have some significant positives, it has some very ugly negatives. These include:
- SB 292 would have raised child support levels in the face of the worst economy since the Great Depression. The current tables were established in 1992 and child support bureaucrats such as Douglas Lumpkin, Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, think the rates should be raised with the inflation rate. But these rates are already linked to income levels, so there is a built-in inflation adjustment—such changes will mean obligors are paying even more.
- SB 292 would have changed Ohio law so that future child support guidelines will not be determined by elected, accountable legislators, but instead by bureaucrats in the same agency whose job is to maximize child support collections in Ohio.
- SB 292 would have treated non-residential parents as decidedly second-class parents. The guidelines consider money the primary residential parents spend on housing, clothes, bicycles, toys, computers, etc. Yet non-residential parents have similar expenses and they are scarcely considered at all by the guidelines.
- SB 292 would have treated all child support obligors who have their children less than 40% of the time the same, whether they spend 145 days a year with their kids or only an hour.
Media Coverage
Our media campaign against SB 292 was led by Donald Hubin, Ph.D. and was highly successful. It included op-eds in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch, numerous TV and radio appearances, including a de facto radio debate with one of the bill’s legislative sponsors, and quotes in nearly a dozen Ohio newspapers.
Special Thanks to…
Fathers and Families' Ohio members Donald Hubin, Ph.D., Terry Kee, Paul Fisher, Rick Bell, and others.