State Lawmakers Ready to Fix Child Support System

Legislators are readying a crush of bills to reform California’s child support system as a consensus has emerged in Sacramento that the time is ripe for repairing the program that affects one of every three children statewide.

After years of significant reform efforts being opposed by the Wilson administration and the powerful California District Attorneys Assn., key legislators and advocates will launch their efforts Tuesday at an unprecedented joint hearing of four committees of the state Senate and Assembly.

The daylong summit is aimed at not only detailing the troubled condition of the state’s $442-million system, but moving quickly toward some broad agreements on reforms.

“I think it is the make or break moment for the California system,” said national child support advocate Paula Roberts. “There is finally widespread recognition that there are serious structural problems that have to be addressed, and the key legislative actors are working together as a body.”

Lawrence Brown, executive director of the California District Attorneys Assn., said he also senses “tremendous momentum in the Legislature to modify the current child support structure.” At a minimum, he said, “there will be stronger supervision of the district attorneys.”

Sen. Adam B. Schiff, (D-Pasadena), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, agrees.

“The problems of collecting child support reflect a fundamental lack of leadership and accountability on the part of the state,” he said. “Simply allowing county district attorneys to do as they see fit is no longer acceptable.”

California’s new governor says the issue is so important that he would be amenable to proposals to create a Cabinet-level post to oversee child support, and he called for tough standards.

“In schools, what matters is student performance,” Gov. Gray Davis said in an interview with The Times. “In child support, what matters, obviously, is returning money to custodial parents.”

Although any serious move to reign in the district attorneys who collect child support in the state’s 58 counties might have been unthinkable just a year ago, growing frustration with California’s child support program has clearly added impetus for reforms.

Some reformers hope to wrest the program from prosecutors. Others question whether that is feasible, but expect--at the minimum--tougher monitoring of the program and even state takeover of programs in failing counties.

Statewide ‘Czar’ Is Proposed

The Democratic leadership in both houses has named child support a top priority this year. Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), chairwoman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee and the designated point person on the issue in the lower house, said that structural changes in the system would be gradual and line workers’ jobs will be protected.

After Tuesday’s joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly’s Judiciary and Human Resources committees, legislators are expected to submit an omnibus bill to alter the structure of the program or make other reforms. They will also commission an audit of the system to provide more data.

Other proposed reforms include:

* Creating a Cabinet-level child support “czar” to coordinate the program statewide.

* Establishing an administrative appeals process to allow people to challenge the actions of district attorneys in some venue other than a courthouse. Although the district attorneys association last year persuaded Gov. Pete Wilson to veto similar legislation, the group is now amenable to a compromise that would permit such appeals.

* Amending state law to give prosecutors clear discretion to excuse men from paying child support when they prove they are not the fathers of children for whom they are billed. Some counties already take such action, but others, including Los Angeles County, take a much tougher and controversial stand, usually continuing to bill. The goal is to develop a uniform approach.

* Adopting an amnesty program that would forgive prior child support debts as long as parents are not delinquent in current support. The aim of the innovative bill, backed by child support advocates and fathers rights groups, is to ensure that more parents pay support rather than flee their responsibilities because debts have become overwhelming.

“We’ve got many noncustodial parents, mostly fathers, very frightened to come in and deal because they owe a lot of money,” Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley) said. Cutting the amount owed may lead to increased collections, she said.

The moves follow a Times series on Los Angeles County’s child support system. The county program ranked last in the state and fails to collect in nine out of 10 cases. Yet from 1995 to 1997, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s department saw its state funding increase eight times faster than its collections.

The problems in Los Angeles, coupled with constant constituent complaints about child support errors and the collapse in 1997 of a $191-million statewide child support system computer, have placed the issue, like education, on the Legislature’s front burner.

“Everyone in the Capitol is aware this issue has hit the boiling point where something is going to happen,” said Richard Bennett, a lobbyist for the Coalition of Parent Support, which represents parents billed for child support.

Nora O’Brien, state director for the child support advocacy group ACES, said: “This is the most excited I have ever been. I think we are going to finally get somewhere on child support reform.”

The question is where.

“I think most members who deal with this issue know this is an issue that has to be addressed this year and they want to see reform, true reform,” said one Capitol staffer. “The question is, what is real reform? Is it just enacting performance measures for the DAs to comply with or is it taking the program away from them?”

Indeed, the most contentious issue is whether the system should remain in the hands of district attorneys, who have repeatedly blocked efforts to shift the program, and the hundreds of millions in federal funds, from their offices.

Under California law, the district attorneys oversee child support programs in each county and are empowered to enforce support orders arising from a divorce and to seek orders to ensure that single parents receive support for minor children.

Brown, of the district attorneys association, says his group still believes prosecutors should oversee child support because they are accountable to local voters and are best equipped to deal with the intricacies of the law.

Kuehl said she is still open to what the best structure is for the state’s program but if evidence shows that transferring functions from prosecutors is best, then she hopes district attorneys will not stand in the way.

“I can’t imagine they would want to hold onto these functions when they’ve been such a burden if they can be done somewhere else,” said Kuehl, a former family law attorney.

State Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Bell), chairwoman of the Senate Human Services Committee, which will co-sponsor the hearing, said many legislators have little patience for the district attorneys. “There are many members who are not happy with the DAs, period,” she said.

The hearings loom especially large in light of federal demands that California join the rest of the nation in implementing a working computer system or face stiff financial penalties--as much as $300 million by 2001.

And if the fines are not enough incentive, state lawmakers also understand that new welfare laws could spell doom for countless families if they cannot turn to a reliable child support system.

In Los Angeles County, officials collect currently due support on only about 10,000 of 400,000 cases where single parents are on welfare.

Garcetti’s aides say the welfare collection numbers, though disappointing, underscore the great size of the agency’s caseload and the especially difficult task of recovering support for families on public assistance. But critics see the statistics--and the less than 3% collection rate in currently due welfare cases--as alarming.

“The only income replacement for mothers and children who are currently on welfare is to have a working child support system. And the one we have here in California, and particularly in Los Angeles, is simply broken,” said Kathy Dresslar, senior policy advocate for the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego.

State’s Scattered Approach Criticized

Many analysts say the fundamental flaw in California’s child support system is its structure, which grants control over child support to elected district attorneys at the county level with the state Department of Social Services supervising them statewide.

This has created a scattered approach to child support that has been blamed for both the inability to build a statewide computer system and the state’s poor performance overall.

Although California reported collecting on 21% of its cases--the national average--in the most recent federal reports, it did so only after closing more than 600,000 cases largely without collecting anything, a statistically driven approach that officials admit is designed to inflate collection rates. In other measures that cannot easily be manipulated, the state is losing ground.

Fathers rights groups and conservative legislators have also expressed some reservations about reform efforts, fearing that attempts to make the system more efficient may lead to increased billing errors.

But even those reservations do not outweigh the widespread recognition that change must come to California’s child support system.

“There may be shades of disagreement about how broken the system is,” said Washington, D.C., child support advocate Roberts, “but anybody who tries to come in this year and say, ‘Everything is fine,’ is gonna be booed out of the room.”

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Rethinking California Child Support

After years of stymied reform efforts, lawmakers are preparing several bills to revamp California’s child support system. Below is a look at the current system and the ideas being considered.

System at a glance, fiscal year 1997-98

Administrative costs: $442 million

Estimated children affected in active cases: 2.9 million

Percentage of welfare paid by the state that is recouped through child support collection: 17.5

Source: California Department of Social Services

Possible reforms include:

* Creating a Cabinet-level post to elevate the attention to--and authority over--California’s $442-million child support system.

* Establishing an administrative appeals process in which citizens could challenge the actions of district attorneys in a venue other than the courthouse.

* Amending state law to give district attorneys clear discretion to set aside court orders against men who prove they are not the fathers of children for whose support they are being billed.

* Enacting an amnesty program that would forgive prior child support debts so long as parents are not delinquent in current support.