Trying to Steal the Spotlight on Child Support

A Hollywood press agent could not have staged it better. It was Father’s Day and there was Gov. Pete Wilson surrounded by chattering children in the middle of a storybook theme park, telling of his proposals to get tough with parents who do not pay child support.

The rhetoric was strong. “I’m here to give notice: California is simply not going to let deadbeat dads walk away scot-free,” Wilson said June 21 before TV news cameras as reporters scribbled in their note pads.

The 10-point program was strong, too. Wilson wanted to make failure to pay child support a felony instead of a misdemeanor. He wanted to provide incentives for counties to force absent parents to pay for medical care for their children as required by law. He proposed establishing a child support enforcement division in the state Department of Social Services. He hoped to streamline the procedures for determining paternity by taking it away from the courts and relying instead on blood and genetic testing.

With the state broke and preparing for massive cutbacks in services, Wilson said it would take five years to implement all of his proposals, but he hoped lawmakers would get started immediately on the needed legislation. “. . . When parents--usually fathers--walk away from their moral obligations to their children, we all pay a price, a fiscal and social price,” he said.

The script was smooth. The setting ideal for TV cameras. The delivery was appropriately somber and the issue is politically popular. So why didn’t the governor’s performance win applause in the Legislature the next day?

Many lawmakers complained that the governor was trying to steal the spotlight on an issue several legislators and the Women’s Legislative Caucus had been pushing for years. One called it a rip-off.

If the governor was really concerned about child support, they asked, why did he wait to announce his program until late in the legislative session, at Fairytale Town near the Sacramento Zoo? Some noted that many of his proposals were already embodied in legislation. Others recalled that last year, without any prodding from the governor’s office, the Legislature had overwhelmingly passed major child support legislation.

One lawmaker, Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), went so far as to stand up on the floor of the lower chamber and demand that “the governor move out of fairyland and get back into reality.”

Referring later to Wilson’s low ratings in the polls, Burton grumbled: “The governor is in deep political trouble so he goes out and picks on an issue that by and large has been handled legislatively without a whole hell of a lot of help from his office.”

The governor’s office seemed mystified by the reaction. “He’s more than willing to spread the glory,” gubernatorial spokesman Kassy Perry said. “He basically was just calling attention to an issue he felt strongly about.”

To the reformers, the reaction was hardly mystifying. Child support has become one of the hot issues of the 1990s. The latest flap demonstrated its elevation to--pardon the analogy-- motherhood status.

Only three years ago, child support had so little political sex appeal that reform measures rarely even made it out of legislative committees. Now the legislation carries a list of sponsors as long as a line of tourists queued up for a view of the Capitol on a hot summer day.

The difference between the 1980s and 1990s is money. As lawmakers look for new ways to stretch scarce dollars, many have realized that welfare costs could be lowered significantly if more absent parents--particularly fathers--were forced to pay child support. As taxpayers also feel the squeeze, errant fathers whose failure to pay child support increases welfare costs become an easy target for their frustration.

“There is a direct link between the number of families receiving welfare and the fact that California is so poor on child support enforcement,” Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-South San Francisco) said.

Neither Speier nor Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland), two longtime leaders in the child support reform effort, were critical of Wilson. Speier said Wilson quietly endorsed her bill last year empowering authorities to attack the professional licenses of those who failed to pay child support. And when major child support legislation sponsored by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) finally passed, she said, Wilson signed it without hesitation.

“There are two ways to view this,” Bates said. “One is that he’s preempting us, stepping into our territory. The other is to say that maybe this means we can get more done. I’m clearly happy to see him show an interest in this area.”

Even with the passage of dozens of reform bills in the last few years, Speier said California has a long way to go. It is still 47th in the nation in collecting child support. The total amount of uncollected child support now totals $3 billion. “The word has got to go out from the top that refusal to pay child support will no longer be tolerated,” Speier said.