Butler is now considered a “large” rather than a “metro” location, which means they are lumped in with counties who have have much smaller caseloads. Previously, the agency was the small fish in a big pond.
Angela Terez, a spokeswoman for ODJFS said the switch was made to “just to allow for more accurate/fair comparisons” because the county’s caseload of 27,132 cases is low, compared to many counties in the metro category that handle more than 50,000 cases as well as Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton which each have 70,000-plus cases. The new threshold for metro counties is 30,000-plus. For large counties, it ranges from 10,001 to 29,999.
Neighboring Warren County has 12,500 active support cases, by comparison, and are expected to collect about $43 million in child support this year. Warren ranked first in three categories, including paternity establishment, support order establishment and total disbursement per full-time equivalent.
Narka Gray, assistant director of Operations and Finance for Butler County CSEA, said the county may not be best overall anymore but it doesn’t mean they have slacked off any.
“When you are twice the size of another county it’s hard to match their numbers,” Gray said. “But to win an award in the large category for collections of current support says a lot, so that means 14 years straight of being recognized by the state.”
Dusty Dunaway, the agency’s program analyst and public relations coordinator said they are “on par” to out-collect the amount they brought in for parents last year. As of October they brought in $47.3 million compared to just under $47 million last year for the first 10 months. The total collected last year was $56.3 million.
Prosecutor Mike Gmoser, whose office handles criminal non-support cases, said CSEA and his office always do their jobs well.
“We’ve always been at the top of the heap,” Gmoser said. “My staff is continuing to do the same performance and the same results and the same terrific recoveries that they’ve always done. There is very little variation year-to-year.”
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