CLINTON, Tenn. (WVLT) -- On average, Anderson County sends four times as many children to state custody than other counties in Tennessee.

That is bad news for its budget if the Department of Children's Services gets its way.

Child advocates say there is legislation being discussed right now that will force judges to choose between children. Choose, or pay up.

The bill will put a limit on how many kids can be placed into custody, and if a county goes over that cap, it will pay $27,000 per child over the limit.

"Each of these numbers represents a child. It's easy to talk about numbers on paper, but we're talking about the lives of children," said Anderson County Juvenile Court Judge April Meldrum.

"They would prefer for the cost of foster care to primarily be borne by the county," Meldrum continued.

The judge says she's not happy that the DCS is trying to force her hand.

Meldrum is concerned it wants to limit how many children she can remove from what she calls dangerous situations. In Anderson County, many times that's meth labs.

Russell Morel agrees.

"I would have obviously preferred to see legislation that had this kind of potential impact long-term, across the state to come through a normal hearing process as opposed to be embedded in in some sort of a budget bill," Morel said.

Morel is the interim executive director for CASA. A child advocate organization.
Morel says while smaller numbers may look good. It's going to hurt the children.

"Over time, the effect of this is, if you take the counties that have the largest numbers and you force them under the cap, what happens to the average next year? Oh it drops, so what you have is a ratcheting effect that goes down and down and down, which is saying next year fewer and fewer children can be placed into custody," Morel explained.

Meldrum wonders if there's not financial gain at the heart of this bill. She asked a DCS representative about stimulus money that was supposed to be earmarked to help foster children.

"He indicated that those monies had been absorbed into the state general fund and that they would no longer be used by the department of children's services that they would be used to balance the state budget," Meldrum told WVLT.

Regardless of how lawmakers vote, Meldrum says it's not going to affect her job.

"My responsibility as a judge is to follow the law. Maybe higher calling than that is to protect the children," Meldrum said.

The $27,000 fine is the cost no matter if the child is in state custody one day, or 365 days.

Which is another reason why child advocates believe this bill was crafted without the best interest of children in mind.