D.A. Told to Fix Child Support Program

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti lost a showdown Tuesday with the county Board of Supervisors, which told him to significantly improve his oft-criticized child support enforcement and collection system but refused to give him any of the $7 million he said he needs to do the job.

In campaign-style pronouncements in recent weeks, Garcetti has been aggressively stumping for the money, saying he needs it to hire about 300 more staffers, to pay his existing employees more and to make a host of organizational and management changes called for in a recent independent audit by the Price Waterhouse LLP accounting and management firm.

But during a marathon board session, the county supervisors and Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen directed Garcetti to make do with the money he has. After an occasionally testy discussion that lasted more than four hours, the supervisors voted unanimously to allow Garcetti to hire as many as 165 new employees and fill 70 long-unfilled vacancies--but to find the money within his $270-million budget. They also ordered Garcetti to come to them with major budget changes before he makes them, saying they were angry that he spent $2 million they had allocated last year for child support on his criminal prosecution operations instead.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, echoing the comments of his four colleagues, said Garcetti needs to show improved management before he can get more money from the county general fund.

“We want accountability,” Yaroslavsky said. “Financial accountability.”

“We want the child support operation to be improved, expanded, and that the people who depend on the system are served in a timely and effective manner--and that has not been the case. There has been some level of frustration on our part,” Yaroslavsky said. “We want to make sure that before we spend any more money that he look within his own budget for savings and sources of revenues to help him fund it.”

After the session, Garcetti said, “I’m disappointed.

“They’re not giving me a sufficient amount of resources . . . to do the job.”

Concerns similar to those of the supervisors are being echoed by the San Francisco-based Children Now coalition of advocacy groups, which has concluded that California’s child support collection system fares extremely poorly compared to those in other states, and that Los Angeles County is among the very worst of all 58 counties within the state.

In a report to be released today, the coalition assails Garcetti’s operation for spending too much on administrative overhead and for not being financially independent, as some in other counties are. For example, for each dollar of administrative expenditure, Alameda County collects $4.12 in support, but Los Angeles collects $2.08.

As a result, Alameda’s program made a $2.9-million profit through incentive bonuses from the state last year, while Los Angeles lost more than $9 million.

The coalition also pointed out the huge backlog of cases in Los Angeles--about 65%--in which there is not yet a court order for collection of child support, compared to a 57% average statewide. The county also ranked last in the state in recouping welfare costs and near the bottom in a host of other benchmarks, such as the monthly average of money collected for custodial parents.

Collection of child support is particularly critical in an era of national welfare reform, the study says, because federal money is increasingly contingent on efforts to prove paternity and to collect support payments.

Citing superior performance by other counties, the supervisors said Garcetti should be able to raise the money he will need to hire additional staff by maintaining an easily achievable level of performance.

For instance, Janssen concluded in a report to the board for Tuesday’s meeting that Garcetti could collect enough child support revenues to be eligible for incentive bonuses from the state. Although some other counties routinely get such bonuses, Garcetti’s operation became eligible for them only within the past two years.

The district attorney refused Tuesday to commit to reaching such a level of child support collections this year.

And even if he does collect as much child support as last year, Garcetti said after the supervisors’ vote, he would still need far more resources to undertake the kind of fundamental improvements in the Bureau of Family Support Operations--whose annual budget is $95 million--that Price Waterhouse and the board called for.

Although some supervisors said Garcetti has made some strides in improving the child support collection system in recent years, they sharply criticized the district attorney for a host of shortcomings, including not filling the 70 current vacancies and not fixing an abysmal automated telephone system that confounds thousands of custodial parents who call every month seeking information about their cases.

In addition, the supervisors hammered Garcetti for asking for more money now, even though he failed to spend $2 million of the money budgeted for child support last year.

Garcetti responded: “You and the CAO knew exactly . . . what was happening [with the money]. We have never hidden anything from you or any board member.”

In its stinging audit, Price Waterhouse last month said Garcetti’s child support collections operation lags behind almost all other California counties in major “benchmark” performance measures such as percentage of money collected, efficiency and operational effectiveness. In addition, it concluded that the system--by far the largest of its kind in the state--is hampered by too many layers of unaccountable bureaucracy, ill-tempered and unresponsive employees and an automated phone system so poor that in one week of calls audited, only 1.6% of the 87,000 callers seeking information on their child support case got through to a live operator.

During Tuesday’s session, everyone from the supervisors to Garcetti to a host of legal advocates, divorced parents and county employees agreed with Price Waterhouse’s conclusions.

“We have huge problems,” Garcetti conceded. “Huge problems. And I know that.”

But Garcetti also said that he has made much progress in the four years he has overseen the collections apparatus.

The most blistering criticism came from legal advocates, many of whom said the audit only confirmed problems they have been complaining about since long before Garcetti took office four years ago.

One by one, they took to the dias to say that systemic problems--even those identified and acknowledged--have gone uncorrected for years. Mothers said they go into further poverty because they can’t get the district attorney to find non-custodial fathers and then get them to pay child support, and fathers said they are punished and have their driver’s licenses taken away even though they submit proof of payment.

“The L.A. D.A.’s office incompetence is legendary among child support advocates and legal service providers,” said Susan Speir of the Long Beach-based SPUNK child support information and referral agency. “We do not believe that giving them additional staff and money . . . will help. What needs to be done is a change in the top management. Until and unless this is done, nothing will change.”

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Child Support Rankings

Los Angeles County fared poorley in a survey of recent child support collections in California’s 58 counties. Here are two examples, with rankings for selected counties:

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Cost Effectiveness

Amount of child support collected per dollar of administrative expenses.

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County $ Amount Statewide Rank Madera $5.14 1 Alameda 4.12 3 Orange $3.80 5 San Diego $3.40 10 Riverside $3.13 15 Sacramento $3.11 17 Ventura $2.49 44 San Francisco $2.30 48 Los Angeles $2.08 51

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% Of Cases With Child Support Orders

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County % With Orders Statewide Rank Sierra 90.4% 1 Alameda 82.9% 4 San Francisco 78.4% 7 Ventura 60.3% 32 Riverside 51.2% 45 Orange 51.1% 47 Los Angeles 34.7% 56 San Diego 29.1% 57 San Bernardino 25.2% 58

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Source: National Center for Youth Law report, based on 1995-96 collections.