Plan to Probe Child Support Unit Rejected

Five months after declaring that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s child support unit needed a major overhaul, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected a proposal to create an inspector general to investigate the operation.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s proposal drew such a lukewarm response from the board that he was unable to win a second for his motion.

“The test of leadership is standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves,” Antonovich said in a statement after the meeting. “Today the board blinked when it failed to stand up for the victims of the district attorney’s system.”

Supervisors said their reluctance to move forward with an inspector general’s position was more a matter of timing than concept.

But in seeking the support of his board colleagues, Antonovich said, “The public has lost confidence in the district attorney. The issue is public confidence in the integrity of the public welfare system.”

He noted that county auditors have said that they are too overworked to probe the child support unit and that the new leader of the department will still report to the district attorney and therefore lack independence.

Still, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who earlier had sharply criticized the district attorney for his handling of the child support unit, said Tuesday, “They may have reached rock-bottom and are turning that thing around. We ought to be looking at ways to help them and not get in their way.”

Although no supervisor but Yaroslavsky even spoke on Antonovich’s motion, their reluctance to consider the proposal contrasts with their previous statements on the child support issue.

After a Times series on the unit in October, supervisors vowed sweeping reforms and warned Garcetti that he needed to repair the unit or lose responsibility for it. Two months later Garcetti presented a $3-million plan that hinged on hiring a new leader for the unit.

On Tuesday, Board Chairman Don Knabe said, “Before you add anything else to the mix, you need to give the district attorney time” to act on already agreed-to initiatives. Although moving in the right direction, Knabe said, Garcetti’s office “still has a long, long way to go” to improve the child support program.

Supervisor Gloria Molina agreed. “I am not saying the department doesn’t need better management. It does. . . . I just don’t think that an inspector general is going to add to their efficiency at this point.”

Supervisors have long complained about the current leadership of the unit, and Garcetti’s pledge to hire an outsider was well-received. The problem in the unit “is not a corruption problem,” Yaroslavsky said, adding that an inspector general may be needed in the future. “It is a management problem, a volume problem.”

Supervisors also have been upset with Antonovich, a conservative Republican who some privately complain is making political hay of the issue in his regular attacks on Garcetti, a Democrat close to several Democratic supervisors.

All three Democrats on the board have toured the unit’s new call center, an area of great concern to supervisors because parents who have been unable to reach the child support unit about their cases inundate supervisors’ offices with complaints. Previously only 1.6% of calls got through, but in recent months the number has improved.

Supervisors also greeted another inspector general proposal tepidly Tuesday, declining to authorize Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to search for his proposed inspector general for jails.

Baca submitted a tentative proposal to the board earlier this month that called for him to select the inspector general. But some noted that the board already relies on an outside attorney, Merrick Bobb, to monitor some of the issues that Baca’s inspector general would tackle.

Supervisors asked that Baca and Bobb report on the specific duties of the inspector general post next month.