D.A. Blasts Report on Child Support Unit

Responding to a report that criticized his child support unit as overly expensive to operate, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury has told county supervisors that the study is “virtually meaningless” because it is based on faulty data.

In a nine-page letter, Bradbury took Legal Services of Northern California to task for ranking Ventura County 20th out of California’s 58 counties in its overall performance in collecting outstanding child support payments.

The Legal Services report ranked Ventura County first in locating non-custodial parents who owe child support. But the county placed 44th in cost-effectiveness, the study said, because it collects just $2.42 in payments for every dollar it spends.

“The bottom line of the child support business is collecting money, and we do a good job at it,” Bradbury wrote.

He said it is impossible to compare counties’ costs to run their child support programs because different jurisdictions report their expenditures differently. For example, some counties do not include the cost of office space in their reports, while Ventura County claims more than $225,000 a year for that.

“The county has benefited by this arrangement because 66% of that cost has been reimbursed by federal funds,” Bradbury wrote.

Also, other county agencies bill some of their costs through the child support division to get federal reimbursement, and Bradbury said he has no control over that.

He accused Legal Services of releasing its report in “a self-serving effort to influence their proposed legislation” to transfer child support collection from county prosecutors to the state.