U.S. Quickly Ends Probe of Child Support

Only three weeks after confirming that it had opened an inquiry into Los Angeles County’s mammoth child support operation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has decided that it will not conduct a full investigation of the agency.

The decision was relayed in a letter Wednesday to attorney Gloria Allred, who had requested an inquiry after a Times investigation of the district attorney’s Bureau of Family Support Operations.

The Times found that despite a $100-million budget and immense enforcement powers, the bureau fails to collect support in the vast majority of its 500,000 cases, goes after men it knows are not fathers owing child support, and holds millions of dollars because it says it cannot locate the single parents who are due the money.

Saying the articles portrayed waste and possible criminal activity, Allred flew to Washington to meet with the inspector general’s office Oct. 30. After her meeting, Health and Human Services officials confirmed that they had opened an inquiry into the policies and practices of the district attorney’s office.

That inquiry apparently ended this week.

Based on information from the district attorney’s office as well as state and federal monitors, Vicki Shepard, regional inspector general for investigations at Health and Human Services, wrote that she determined that these “concerns and allegations have little or no merit” and do not warrant a federal investigation.

“The articles in the L.A. Times do point out many of the operational and managerial weaknesses within the [Bureau of Family Support Operations] that Dist. Atty. [Gil] Garcetti has conceded must be improved,” Shepard wrote.

“However, the information we have received from other sources indicates [the bureau] has already made advances in many of the areas that were the subjects of the articles, including the area of collections, paternity establishment, customer service and criminal enforcement action.”

Further, the letter says that the inspector general cannot address “day-to-day operations” of the office and that many of the issues in the series were beyond its purview.

Shepard could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear who, other than government officials, had been interviewed before she reached her decision.

Victoria Pipkin, a spokeswoman for Garcetti, said Shepard’s office contacted the district attorney’s child support management. “They called our administration in the normal course of business,” she said.

Pipkin hailed Shepard’s letter as a vindication of the office.

“The allegations made by Gloria Allred have no merit, and the letter from the inspector general confirms that position,” Pipkin said.

Allred, however, said she was astounded that the inspector general’s office balked at a full-scale investigation into possible wrongdoing in the nation’s largest county-based child support program.

“The suggestion that advances have been made is baffling, given the fact that the L.A. County child support program is still the worst in the state. And even if there were housekeeping changes, that would have no effect on whether any criminal activity or fraud took place,” Allred said.

“We have millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of taxpayers’ dollars at stake. We have children who have been deprived of their child support by the failure of the district attorney’s office,” Allred said. “Government must care enough to investigate why this has occurred.”