Opinion ID: 1444152
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: CSED Violated Bostic's Due Process Rights.

Text: Bostic argues that CSED's recalculation of his child support obligation is invalid because he was denied due process of law at every turn of the three-year review process. The crux of Bostic's argument is that CSED failed to provide him adequate notice of the proceedings and did not allow him to meaningfully participate in either an informal conference or the formal appeal. CSED has elected not to address the merits of Bostic's appeal, choosing instead to make only the argument, discussed above, that Bostic's appeal was untimely. We agree with Bostic that CSED failed to provide the constitutional safeguards required under the Alaska Constitution. [9] Due process of law requires that before valuable property rights can be taken directly or infringed upon by governmental action, there must be notice and an opportunity to be heard. [10] When a party raises a due process claim, we first must determine whether there is a 'deprivation of an individual interest of sufficient importance to warrant constitutional protection.' [11] We conclude that when the State seeks to increase child support, a significant property interest is often at stake. [12] Due process is a flexible concept that requires procedural protections as the particular situation demands. [13] We therefore evaluate the entire set of safeguards that were provided by CSED in its file review and formal hearing process. [14]
The hearing officer's decision excused CSED's failure to allow Bostic to appear in person at the informal conference based on a finding that he was unresponsive to CSED's three-year review notice and that he failed to make any affirmative attempt to participate in the process. But this clearly was not the case. Bostic responded to the notice in a timely manner, and if CSED considered his submissions to be deficient, it neither informed him of the problem nor did it explain what documents could be substituted for the tax returns or W-2s. CSED never gave notice to Bostic that it was planning to conduct a file review on January 31, 1995. Although CSED's regulations provide that an informal conference may be conducted in person, through correspondence, or by telephone, [15] the proceeding must allow the administrative authority to examine both sides of the controversy in order to protect the interests and rights of all who are involved. [16] Where a proceeding is not conducted in person, due process envisions an exchange of information, not unilateral action by the government. We have previously held that `fairness can rarely be obtained by secret, one-sided determinations of facts decisive of rights.' [17] Additionally, we conclude that CSED failed to make reasonable efforts, as required by its own regulations, [18] to obtain the information necessary to make a support calculation before imputing income to Bostic. CSED claimed that it sought the missing income information through a computer database, but it never attempted to contact Bostic or inform him that it believed his documentation was insufficient. Given that Bostic was in the best position to provide the information, we consider CSED's failure to contact him at anytime between July 10, 1994 and January 31, 1995 to have been unreasonable. We therefore conclude that CSED's substitution of a file review for the informal conference and its decision to impute income to Bostic without providing him an opportunity to be heard violated Bostic's due process rights.
We have held that a failure to afford due process may sometimes be cured by a subsequent hearing in which due process is provided. [19] But here, we conclude that the hearing officer once again violated Bostic's due process rights at the appeal hearing by improperly basing her decision on evidence that was not in the record at the close of the hearing. The purpose of the appeal of CSED's file review was for Bostic to have an opportunity to prove that CSED's support calculation was incorrect because his financial circumstances were not as the agency ha[d] determined. [20] At the hearing, Bostic testified that he had submitted all the documents that he possessed. The hearing officer seemed to agree during the hearing that there wasn't actual notice for the file review and that Bostic's attorney had established that [the file review decision] was probably not correct. The hearing officer stated that the purpose of the remainder of the hearing was to establish today [Bostic's] income so that an accurate calculation can be made. At the conclusion of the hearing, Bostic's attorney asked whether new information would be allowed into the record following the hearing. The hearing officer responded: I will be basing my decision on the information that was presented today by both parties and [CSED] is going to submit a recalculation based on the Division's determination of what [Bostic's] income is, using the affidavits and, as I stated earlier, the other information presented today. (Emphasis added.) Thus, Bostic and his counsel were left with the impression that the record was left open solely to allow CSED to submit the amount of the obligation based on Bostic's testimony. But CSED supplemented the record on May 1, 1995 with a letter alleging that Bostic had been operating gold mining claims under a number of aliases. Without reopening the hearing evidence or giving Bostic a full and fair opportunity to rebut CSED's allegations, the hearing officer used this information as the basis of her decision to impute income to Bostic, holding that he had not been forthcoming with all pertinent income information, and that his earlier testimony was not credible. Yet, Bostic volunteered in his original income affidavits of July 1, 1994 that he earned approximately $12,000 from piece work and gold mining activities in 1993. The hearing officer also failed to provide Bostic with notice that voluntary underemployment [21] would be an issue at the hearing. Yet, the hearing officer based her decision to impute income to Bostic upon her conclusion that Bostic had the necessary skills to be employed full-time as a mechanic. Bostic was never given an opportunity to respond to the issue of voluntary underemployment. And although Bostic testified at the hearing that he was a pretty good mechanic, this evidence alone cannot support the hearing officer's finding that Bostic had the skills or ability to work as a full-time mechanic, that such jobs were available, or that he could earn over $40,000 a year in such a position. We have previously held that a litigant had ample opportunity to be heard where he was afforded an informal hearing, a formal conference before a hearing examiner, an appeal to the superior court, and an appeal to this court. [22] But in the present case, CSED hindered Bostic's attempts to present his side of the story, thus denying him due process of law. We vacate CSED's decision to increase Bostic's child support to $933 a month and remand for a full hearing to determine Bostic's obligation.