D.A.’s Child Support Program

Re “D.A. Told to Fix Child Support Program,” Sept. 10: The Board of Supervisors was right to deny Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti his requested $7 million to improve the oft-criticized child support enforcement system. The system is woefully mismanaged, which as an attorney I have seen firsthand.

The district attorney is currently trying to collect back child support and obtain an order for a wage assignment for future support from one of my clients as a “deadbeat dad.” Good thing, you say? Maybe so, except that my client is female, is the child’s custodial parent and has lived with and provided for the child’s support its entire life. The district attorney refuses to accept proof of the obvious and persists in litigating against her. Ultimately, this will have to be resolved by the court at great and unnecessary cost to the taxpayers and a waste of the court’s and the district attorney’s time; not to mention the time and expense this is costing my client.

Let’s fix this atrocious system before we throw more money at it.

DOUGLAS B. INMAN

Los Angeles

* You characterized Garcetti’s phone system as “so poor” because only 1.6% of 87,000 calls reached an operator. Actually, this is a triumph of engineering and very hard to do! Believe me, it’s not easy to design a phone system to keep that many citizens from pestering your hard-working employees. A company trying to sell us voice mail told us that many government phone systems are designed to make it very difficult to talk to a human, but I think this has been raised to a new level in the district attorney’s office.

Garcetti, who desperately needs more money for his department, could have a lucrative sideline job in lecturing government agencies on how to develop a convoluted phone system designed to keep those pesky citizens at bay!

RICHARD SHILLING

Pacific Palisades

* Not only does Garcetti need to fill the 70 long-unfilled vacancies, but he needs to hire competent workers.

The father of my 27-month-old daughter lives in New York City. My nightmares with this office started almost two years ago when they searched for him here in L.A., despite the paperwork I filled out listing his home and office addresses and phone numbers. My most recent nightmare is this: He sent $900 in child support money through the court system in February. I wasn’t even told about the money until early July. Then, when they promised to send it to me, they erroneously sent it back to Albany. After several repeated phone calls which were never returned, I wrote letters to Wayne Doss, director of Bureau of Family Support Operations. I didn’t get a return phone call until late August. As of this date I still have not received any of the money.

I’m a college-educated woman with a somewhat decent job who got to the point I have (which isn’t very far) because I know how to write letters and be persistent with my phone calls. I wonder about some of those teenage mothers who don’t have a clue and are really being overlooked and pushed aside by the system.

JANE M. COREY

Los Angeles