Governor holds meetings on state's welfare computer woes

The state is facing at least $1.6 million in federal penalties because it has failed to get the NOMADS computer program up and running well enough to monitor child support payments and track deadbeat dads.

Another $3.6 million in fines will be added to that if the system isn't running by 2000, bringing the total for this two-year budget cycle to $5.2 million.

Pete Ernaut, Guinn's chief of staff, said the governor will discuss solutions to the problem during three days of meetings with federal welfare officials beginning Monday.

Ernaut said the big stumbling block is converting all existing cases so they can be loaded into the NOMADS system. It takes as much as four hours to do each case, and there are 80,000 cases.

"We want to form a sort of SWAT team of highly technical people to try to get the conversion of those cases done in a year," he said. "If we can do it, it would save the state millions in penalties."

Ernaut said Guinn believes the conversion process can be streamlined to about 90 minutes per case, and the job can be accomplished much faster with a few extra workers.

"And if we get a conversion plan, the governor believes he will be able to negotiate a stay of some of those fines," Ernaut said.

At a meeting with legislative leaders Friday, Guinn said it may take more than $2 million to do the job.

Ernaut said the governor will try to convince federal officials to release more money for the state to do the job.

When completed, NOMADS is supposed to integrate all programs and services available through welfare into one system. It has been billed as a "one-stop shopping" for families needing such services.

But because of repeated development problems and the complexity of an integrated system, it has cost more than $95 million - most of it federal money - to develop the system over the last decade.

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