Garcetti to Offer Child Support Changes

Two months after he was asked to develop a plan for dramatically improving his child support program, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti will unveil a proposal today that outlines few structural changes but does call for a new overseer of the agency.

The plan--which includes using private companies for special child support tasks and changes in state law to make errors easier to repair--received mixed reviews from child support advocates, who praised some of Garcetti’s efforts but feared the central problems in the agency were not addressed.

“Some people will be better served,” said Jane Preece, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. But, she said, “the fundamental defects in their operation will remain.”

Garcetti said he would not comment on the plan before today’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

Meanwhile, an influential congressman urged the federal Health and Human Services Department on Monday to reopen an investigation of the district attorney’s Bureau of Family Support Operations.

In a strongly worded letter to the department’s regional inspector general, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) said he was troubled that the agency spent only three weeks examining the alleged falsification of records to obtain federal funds.

McKeon wrote that many of his constituents have complained of problems with the child support agency and said he was “very concerned that this pattern of problems . . . could be related to the aforementioned fraud.”

Citing a Times report that one former caseworker gave evidence of falsification to investigators days before the probe ended, McKeon said he may request a Justice Department inquiry and/or call for congressional hearings if the investigation is not reopened.

The inspector general’s office did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

Discussion at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting today, however, is expected to center on Garcetti’s plan for improving his office.

The district attorney proposes conducting a nationwide search and hiring a chief operating officer to oversee the operation and making several other changes. They would include increasing reliance on the private sector for assistance in finding missing parents and families for whom the office has collected money. Garcetti also said he is seeking funding for a Rand Corp. study of how other cities collect child support.

Not addressed are issues regarding the office’s much-criticized computer system and management structure, wherein no case is assigned to a single worker. Although child support advocates were disappointed at these and other omissions, they were cautiously optimistic about what they saw.

“It’s a lot more in the ballpark than it used to be,” said Betty Nordwind, executive director of the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law and chair of the county’s Family Support Advisory Board. “This is a giant step forward.”

David Janssen, the county’s chief administrative officer, also said he thought the plan takes appropriate steps. “I think the district attorney is getting the message,” he said. “There is still a lot of progress to be made, but he’s moving in the right direction.”

The plan is only one piece of an increasingly complex child support reform puzzle.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich is seeking to privatize the agency, and Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke has proposed moving some functions elsewhere in the county bureaucracy.

State legislators are also pushing numerous proposals that could reshape the way child support is collected in California.

The changes come in the wake of a Times series on Garcetti’s office, which fails to collect in nine out of 10 of its cases, holds millions of dollars that should go to families and collects money from men who are not related to children they must support.

Garcetti submitted his plan to board offices Friday. In it, the district attorney cites a recent 21% increase in collections, higher than the state average, as proof that his operation is improving.

“Despite these improvements,” Garcetti wrote, “we still have substantial room for additional improvement and I wish to accelerate our rate of improvement.”

The recent increase only shows part of the picture. Overall, Garcetti’s office is ranked as the worst-performing in the state, and through the years has improved at the same rate as all other counties. It collects the same amount of the state’s child support, 18%, as it did four years ago.

An earlier draft of the plan, obtained Monday by The Times, shows Garcetti was going to ask board members for hundreds of new staffing positions, many in management. A spokeswoman said “that was not a serious proposal.”

Garcetti ultimately asked for 23 new positions at a cost of $1.1 million between now and the close of the fiscal year in June. That amount, he said, would be offset by federal funding and increased collections.