Child Support Held by D.A. Fails to Drop

Despite assurances that it is doing everything possible to release child support money to families, reports issued Thursday suggest that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office has made almost no progress, continuing to hold $21 million that should be distributed.

In October, Garcetti’s office said it was holding $18 million in child support it had already collected. On Thursday, it distributed reports to the county’s Family Support Advisory Board showing the figure was $21 million, an increase which that officials said was a result of the agency’s success in collecting money.

But late in the day Garcetti’s office, though unable to provide documentation, said the money being held now is almost the same as that held in October. The new report, unlike October’s, includes welfare money being held for distribution, the office said.

Regardless, the total being held represents a significant share of the $257 million the agency collected in the past fiscal year and shows that whatever its improvements in getting money, the office continues to have problems distributing it. Almost $10 million in the last report has been held for more than a year, and some funds have been held years longer.

“It’s hard enough to get people to pay” support, Chairwoman Betty Nordwind told her advisory board colleagues. “And for it to be sitting [in county accounts] drives me up the wall.”

Family support officials told the board that they have launched several initiatives to accelerate release of the money, including increasing staff and testing the private sector’s ability to help locate parents.

Family support director Wayne Doss also disclosed that the office will soon open a special fund for families whose payments have been unnecessarily delayed by the bureaucracy. Although officials did not say how much money would be made available, Doss said the fund would be operational within a month.

Child support advocates have pushed for such measures for years. The changes come after a Times series detailed numerous problems within Garcetti’s child support program.

Even as advocates welcomed the initiatives, some expressed anger that it took so long to implement them.

“It’s about time and it’s 10 years too late,” attorney Jane Preece of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles said of Doss’ announcement.

Nordwind also voiced exasperation at the continuing problems within Garcetti’s office, particularly its long-standing inability to locate parents.

“To the extent that this problem is attributable to bad addresses, it is outrageous,” said Nordwind, executive director of the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law. “In this day and age, they should be national experts . . . in the field of locating parents” for child support.

But during a lengthy discussion, county child support officials--citing their huge caseload and lack of access to better databases--said they continue to have problems locating parents. And that obstacle, in turn, has slowed their efforts to release the money.

For example, officials released a chart showing that as of Tuesday, the same day Garcetti outlined a series of reforms to the Board of Supervisors, the county was holding $6.5 million in one collection account. Just over $2.9 million of that amount had been held just since January, the report said, and a timeline showed $220,000 or more having been held as far back as January 1995.

“What is being done to get this money out?” Preece, the panel’s vice chairwoman, asked county officials. “Is there a mechanism in place . . . or does it always take a complaint?”

Until recently, said the agency’s Jim Crumb, the child support program had only 20 people with the security clearance to process the payments without risking the possibility that they might erroneously go to the wrong person or address.

But that staffing has been increased, Crum said, because of the rising amount of money being held. “That is one of the concerns we have,” he said of the money on hold. “That [amount] shouldn’t be growing.”

In addition, Crum said, the agency is testing several private vendors with access to more databases. A recent pilot project, he said, found that three companies were able to generate “new information” in 300 of the 350 cases each was given to analyze. And although that did not necessarily mean parents had been located, it did suggest that the information available to private collection companies can significantly aid the county’s child support program, he said.

But several advisory panel members, troubled by the agency’s delays in correcting problems, voiced support but little confidence Thursday in the initiatives.

Recalling Garcetti’s appearance Tuesday before county supervisors, Nordwind said she is no longer looking at incremental initiatives to dramatically improve the child support collection program.

“There are only two hopes,” she said after the meeting. “One, that [county officials] really do bring in someone who can manage. Or two, that the state takes it over.”