State Welfare chief grilled by legislators over costly computer system

CARSON CITY -Nevada legislators want to know why the state's $90 million-plus computer system to monitor child support payments isn't up and running despite years of development.

Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means members raised the question Wednesday as they got their first look at Gov. Kenny Guinn's $755.5 million human services budget for the next two years.

The hardest questions were reserved for Myla Florence, chief of the state's Welfare Division, and focused on the "Nomads" computer system that was initiated in 1989. The system was initially expected to cost $12 million.

Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, asked Florence about the final cost of the system.

"We are still finalizing cost with regard to federal and state shares. It's about $94 million projected through the end of 1999," Florence said.

The state has to pick up about $40 million of the tab, with the rest of the money coming from food stamp, Medicaid and other federal programs.

Florence also told the joint budget committee that the Nomads system should be up and running - finally - by March.

The state is being penalized $714,000 by the federal government for failing to make a deadline of fiscal 1998. A $1.6 million penalty could be imposed if the system isn't on line by the end of fiscal 1999.

"It's not going to be ready until March. I've heard that song so many times before," O'Donnell replied.

Florence said the agency already loaded about 1,400 cases in Reno and is just starting to use the system in Las Vegas, Carson City, Elko and Fallon.

She added that most of the cases to be entered in the near future are for Medicaid and food stamp distribution, along with some elderly and disabled cases.

When the federal government ordered the states to develop a single child support computer system, Nevada decided to bring its full welfare system into Nomads, instead of piecemeal. The 1997 welfare reform efforts meant still more changes.

But O'Donnell criticized the state for using the system for things the federal government never asked for, adding that the 10-year-old system is using software and hardware that is old and out of date.

"The mandate from the federal government was to provide child support enforcement, but we've decided to do welfare recipients of all kinds. We've gone way beyond the scope of what we're supposed to be doing," he said.

Last year there were about 83,700 child-support cases in Nevada, with about 20 percent of them involving out-of-state parents.

"I'm at the point where I want to tell the federal government 'Why don't we quit wasting your money and ours and let's do something else,"' O'Donnell said.

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