Audit: Maryland agency allowed $1.4B in unpaid child support to stack up

Racquel Bazos, Baltimore Sun on Apr 9, 2025

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A legislative audit released last week found that the Department of Human Services let almost $1.4 billion in unpaid child support accumulate without applying the proper penalties to those who were delinquent.

The audit found that in fiscal 2023, the state collected $457.8 million in child support for 162,000 open cases. The amount of unpaid child support that year was $1.4 billion — an amount roughly consistent across fiscal years, even as open cases and collections decreased between 2020 and 2023, according to the audit.

The Child Support Administration, a division within the Department of Human Services, also failed to properly coordinate driver’s license suspensions with the Motor Vehicle Administration, according to the audit signed by Legislative Auditor Brian S. Tanen.

The audit says the CSA “provides services to both the non-custodial and custodial parents, which include the establishment of paternity and child support orders, the collection of child support payments, and the distribution of such funds.”

The MVA can suspend driver’s or occupational licenses after at least 60 days of child support delinquency, the report said. But over a third of referrals the Child Support Administration sent to the MVA were rejected between September 2023 and February 2024, the audit found.

Seventeen percent of rejections were from missing or mismatched driver’s license numbers, which auditors said the department doesn’t require caseworkers to collect.

Auditors recommended that the administration “develop procedures to ensure that driver’s licenses are being properly suspended, including the review of rejections by the MVA, and to provide corrected information to the MVA to process driver’s license suspensions.”

Not investigating rejections was mentioned in the last audit, the report said, but the Child Support Administration disputed that it was a repeat finding. The agency wrote that as it was trying to address the previous audit, MVA cited privacy concerns over a possible solution that called for listing the 10 most likely matches for rejected referrals.

The administration is working on enhancing its procedures to address non-matches reported by the MVA, it said.

“CSA has made a concerted effort to address the previous audit recommendation, including a collaborative approach with the MVA,” the agency wrote in its response to the audit.

“We remain dedicated to ensuring the integrity of our processes and will continue to work diligently to minimize errors and protect the rights of our customers, while respecting the MVA’s policies.”

Between July 2019 and June 2023, the department had vacancies ranging between 4.8% and 11.5%, which could have contributed to the findings in the report, auditors wrote.

CSA and MVA were not immediately available for comment.

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