Child Support Reform Clears Senate Panel

A key committee of the state Legislature overwhelmingly agreed Tuesday that California’s beleaguered child support system should be taken away from district attorneys and put under the auspices of a new state department.

The 6-1 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee marks the first time in years that any serious progress has been made in Sacramento to strip the child support program from county prosecutors.

This proposal, however, has been spearheaded by one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), and co-sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank).

“This is very significant,” Burton said after the vote. “Now, it’s up to the opposition to explain why this bill isn’t any good as opposed to us explaining why it makes sense.”

Unlike several other child support reform packages already winding their way through the Legislature, the Burton-Schiff bill, SB 542, would over three years remove the program from the control of the 58 district attorneys who have run it for two decades.

Oversight would transfer to a new state Department of Child Support Enforcement. The agency would be responsible for ensuring that support is collected and distributed for about 3 million children statewide.

California’s program is widely viewed as one of the nation’s worst, with unpaid support by some estimates totaling as high as $8 billion.

In Los Angeles County, which runs the largest program of its kind in the country, a Times investigation found that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office has failed to collect child support in the vast majority of its 500,000 cases, while simultaneously failing to distribute millions of dollars that was collected because, the office claimed, it could not locate the proper recipients.

The debate Tuesday centered on how to make sure that lawmakers do not, in haste, replace one bad system with another.

Noting that some counties have made progress in collecting support, Lawrence Brown of the California District Attorneys Assn. argued that it was unfair for legislators to set aside an entire structure without allowing prosecutors with good programs to continue.

“We understand what’s going on is not satisfactory to the Legislature and the public,” Brown told the committee. “But in crafting a solution . . . do you take the program away from all the D.A.s in one fell swoop?”

But Burton reacted angrily. “You mean you are doing the job you are paid to do and you want a commendation for that?” he asked Brown.

“If the D.A.s were doing a great job,” an exasperated Burton said later, “we wouldn’t’ be here.”

During the hearing, lawmakers listened not only to attorneys and advocates but also to several single mothers who told stories of unpaid child support that underscored the widespread nature of California’s child support crisis.

“I have not received a dime of child support,” said Jessica Bradley of Sacramento. She told the committee she has been forced to go on public assistance after the district attorney spent four years on her case.

Breaking into tears, Rosemary Alexander of Santa Cruz said that her district attorney’s office took five months to file an order. “Children can get awfully hungry in a five-month period,” she said.

In 43 of the state’s 58 counties, less than 10% of children leaving welfare rolls are receiving child support, said Kathryn Dresslar of Children’s Advocacy Institute in San Diego.

With welfare reform reducing government assistance, advocates said at the hearing that the state must restructure its child support program or leave millions of single-parent families without help.

Lawmakers said approval by the committee sets the stage for fierce debate on child support reforms in the coming weeks.

“This is a groundbreaking day for the children of California,” said attorney Leora Gershenzon of the National Center for Youth Law. “What the Senate committee passed is dramatic legislation to finally overhaul the system.”