Md. General Assembly OKs new child support guidelines 

Posted: 7:58 pm Mon, April 12, 2010
By Staff and Wire Reports

As the General Assembly’s midnight deadline approached Monday, lawmakers passed legislation that will adjust child support guidelines for the first time since 1989.

The changes to the financial guidelines courts use to set child-support guidelines will raise the scale for payments starting in October.

“It’s a big step forward,” Sen. Brian E. Frosh, D-Montgomery, said of the pending change, calling an increase in child support contributions long overdue hours before the measure passed.

The stagnant guidelines have not kept pace with the increased cost of raising children over the last 21 years, he said.

Under the current guidelines, for example, parents with one child and a combined adjusted actual income of $10,000 per month, or $120,000 annually, should contribute a total of $1,040 per month (or $12,480 annually) to support that child. The non-custodial parent pays the difference between $1,040 and the amount the custodial parent is deemed to contribute.

The legislation would raise the parents’ combined contribution to $1,271 per month (or ($15,252 annually).

Senators agreed Monday to the House of Delegates’ call that the guidelines not apply to combined adjusted actual incomes above $15,000 per month, or $180,000 annually. Meanwhile, House negotiators accepted the Senate’s request that the guidelines go into effect this Oct. 1, rather than Oct. 1, 2011.

The new guidelines would apply only to new child-support cases or motions to modify child support that are brought on or after that date.

Sex-offender laws

But lawmakers continued to hammer out the details on other bills, including some changes to sex-offender laws.

Jennifer Foxwell, the mother of Sarah Foxwell, told reporters that she was appalled lawmakers had waited so long to approve longer prison sentences. She walked into the Maryland State House with Sarah’s aunt, Tracey Powell, Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis and Joan Harris, president of Citizens for Jessica’s Law, to push for the strongest bill.

“We really need to be advocates for the rest of the children in the state of Maryland and all across the country to make sure that we do protect our children,” Foxwell said.

The House had approved a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for people who commit more serious sex offenses or rape against a child, instead of a five-year sentence under current law. The Senate version of the bill makes a mandatory 20-year-sentence.

Both chambers had already approved a measure to require lifetime supervision for people who commit the most severe sex crimes, but there will be last-day negotiating on other bills.

“We need to make it happen today,” Harris said. “It’s an absolute disgrace that it’s taken this long for this Maryland General Assembly to get this done for our children.”

Lawmakers still hadn’t fully agreed on legislation that would bring Maryland into compliance with the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which creates minimum standards for sex offender registration. States have been given until July 2010 to comply or risk losing federal grants.

Public Defender board

In other actions, Frosh said he expected the House and Senate to pass a bill that would limit the Maryland public defender to a six-year-term, and be overseen by a 13-member board.

The identical measures that headed to the Senate and House floors marked a compromise between senators and delegates who hammered out differences Monday afternoon, said Frosh, who led the Senate negotiating team.

Under the compromise measure, the public defender could still be removed by a majority vote. But that majority would consist of seven votes, Frosh said.

The Legislature’s consideration of the measure follows the controversial firing last August of former Public Defender Nancy S. Forster on a 2-1 vote of the current three-member panel that oversees the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

Frosh, who chairs the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, and other supporters of the legislation have expressed frustration that the state’s chief defender of indigent criminal defendants could be removed by just two individuals.

The measure would also specify that the public defender could be removed for “misconduct in office,” “persistent failure to perform the duties of office” and “conduct prejudicial to the proper administration of justice.”

Current law states that the public defender serves “at the pleasure of” the board.

Tougher gang law

Even as legislators haggled over differences in bills that had already been passed in the House and Senate, the Senate on Monday passed legislation to make it easier to prosecute gang members and stiffen penalties against them. The legislation would amend the Gang Prosecution Act of 2007, which has resulted in only one guilty plea and zero convictions by a jury in nearly three years.

The bill adds crimes that would make gang members eligible for stronger penalties, including witness intimidation and second-degree assault, and requires a judge to order additional prison time in certain circumstances.

Many black senators opposed the legislation, saying it could penalize innocent youths for their associations.