By: Mark Fitzgerald When the idea was first floated of running a special insert in The Courier-Journal listing the "Top 1,000 Delinquent Child Support Obligors," the county attorney for Metro Louisville, Ky., was skeptical.
"Long before I got involved in politics, I've been going to court to collect child support in some form or fashion since 1979 or thereabout," Jefferson County Attorney Irv Maze said in a telephone interview Thursday. "These are difficult cases. ... These are the hard-core obligors."
He started becoming a believer in the power of newspaper advertising even before the ad even ran.
"We had a radio and a couple of preliminary ads in the Courier-Journal," Maze said. "We said, get ready, there's going to be an ad in the paper, look for it. There was a constant buzz: 'Oh, my God, is my name going to be on this list?'"
Less than an hour before the first radio ads were broadcast, the calls started coming in -- some from the deadbeats themselves. "We got calls from people who thought they might be in this ad, and they wanted to get their heart right. They wanted to make sure they weren't on the list," Maze said.
The hefty insert ran on Sunday, July 31, listing the names and last known addresses of people who owed the most money and were the most delinquent in their child support payments. There was a special hotline established just for responses to the ad.
Thursday, Maze's office released the first results.
The ad generated 465 phone calls, county attorney spokesperson Bill Patterson said. "We have found people who are employed, and we've made 215 wage assignments so far," he said. That's just for starters: The office has set court dates in 167 cases that are likely to generate even more support.
Bottom line so far: The Courier-Journal insert has generated more than 1,000 payments totaling $126,239.
"When you find out you can collect in excess of $126,000 -- new money, not money you've been collecting all along -- we could not have done this with this group [of delinquents] any other way that I'm aware of," Maze said.
The total campaign cost about $38,000, including $25,000 for the insert itself, and another $13,000 for the teaser newspaper and radio ads.
"This was money well spent," Maze said. In addition to the child support money, the ad also raised the public's awareness of the county's campaign to chase after deadbeat parents, he said.
"Sixty days into it," Maze added, "I can say that the program exceeded my expectations."
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