NH revising payment guidelines

AP reports:

CONCORD, N.H. (New Hampshire) Attorney General Kelly Ayotte says the state should seek new bids for a child support contract that nearly went to an economist who was jailed in Georgia for failing to make payments to his children.

R-Mark Rogers of Peachtree City, Georgia, had been the low bidder for a contract to retool New Hampshire's child support guidelines. At the time, the governor, health commissioner and a panel examining the bids didn't know Rogers served time in the 1990s over more than 72-hundred dollars in owed child support.

Ayotte says this time around, bidders should be asked to disclose any pertinent legal history so officials can fully evaluate whether potential conflicts or biases exist.

This story is fishy, because no one is ever order to make payments to his children. But more to the point, no one should ever trust a closed-door process of developing guidelines anyway. They should be verifily based on demonstrable data using an accepted methodology.