D.A.s Warned of Losing Their Authority Over Child Support

Launching a massive effort to overhaul California’s ailing child support system, legislators Tuesday warned the state’s district attorneys that their poor performance puts them in jeopardy of losing control of a program they have run for the past 25 years.

“The clock is running, and it’s running very fast,” state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) warned prosecutors at the close of an unprecedented daylong hearing on improving child support. “We are serious about this, and unless the picture improves faster than we can come up with an alternative, we may use an alternative,” said the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman.

At the minimum, legislators said after a news conference and the joint hearing of the Assembly and Senate Judiciary and Human Services committees, the coming year will see a new state office dedicated solely to child support, tougher oversight of prosecutors and a child support chief with the authority to take over failing programs.

The effort began Tuesday with a bill to create a Cabinet-level child support “czar” and is expected to continue today as legislative leaders meet to hash out the specifics of reform proposals.

“Everything,” Schiff said, “is on the table.”

Added Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica): “It is clear that we have an unprecedented concurrence” for action.

Despite some of the country’s toughest laws, California’s $440-million-a-year child support system continues to rank at or near the bottom of programs in collections. Its collection rate of below 20%, several officials noted Tuesday, is about the same as it was two decades ago.

Structural reforms, however, have proved difficult as the district attorneys who run the program in the state’s 58 counties have fought efforts to remove it from their control or cede more authority to the state.

But it is the confusing line of authority and accountability that has exasperated child support advocates and lawmakers such as state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Daly City), who said her bill to create a child support czar would provide much-needed focus to a vast operation.

“Without leadership, accountability and authority at the top, California’s child support program cannot adequately serve California’s children,” she said. “The current program is like a dysfunctional family--no parents, no discipline, no guidance and no responsibility.”

While acknowledging problems with the program, Leslie Frye, who runs California’s Office of Child Support, said there is no “silver bullet” solution to dramatically improve the state’s performance. Frye said that improving child support will depend more on the resources available than restructuring.

Expert after expert spoke Tuesday of the need for more emphasis on administrative rather than legal processes. And it is critical, they said, to somehow centralize a program so diffuse that, by Speier’s reckoning, its responsibilities are now split among 15 state and local agencies, in addition to the 58 district attorneys.

“If you don’t deal with your structural problems, you will not get the right leadership to take this program into the next century,” Paula Roberts, a national child support expert, told a standing-room-only chamber. “No one in their right mind would come to California to run your program.”

The hearing follows a Times series on Los Angeles County’s troubled child support system, which, although it was ranked last in the state, has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in incentive payments.

Determined to get to the bottom of chronic problems, legislators heard Tuesday from speakers ranging from a representative of the Little Hoover Commission--which issued a stinging 1997 report on child support--to the director of Minnesota’s well-regarded operation.

Their testimony was aimed at providing legislators with a road map as they contemplate sweeping changes.

“The current system has done an exceedingly poor job of collecting child support,” said state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). “And I think the problems really reflect a fundamental lack of leadership and accountability.”

Although representatives of district attorneys’ offices and the courts cautioned that changing child support to an administrative process might jeopardize due process rights, they conceded that major reforms are necessary and inevitable.

And some fathers rights groups and legislators warned that focusing too much on collecting money rather than ensuring accurate enforcement would only exacerbate the child support billing problems and drive families further apart.

“I’m deeply disturbed that we’re moving toward a whole system of presumption of guilt,” said state Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon).

Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, president of the California District Attorneys Assn., acknowledged that “at times we’ve been part of the problem. For the past several years, we’ve been working toward solutions.”

Though his influential group wants to participate in the reform process, Bradbury said, it would still oppose giving up control.

Leora Gershenzon of the National Center for Youth Law warned that leaving district attorneys with control over part of the program--even if a new agency was created to oversee them--would perpetuate the problems legislators have for years been trying to solve.

“The Department of Social Services or even a new child support agency is never going to be a political match for the district attorneys,” she told legislators. “I’ve spent too much time in this building to think that’s a fair fight.”