D.A. Sees Threat in Child-Support Bill

Orange County’s district attorney responded angrily Friday to an overwhelming vote by the state Senate to strip child-support enforcement from the state’s prosecutors.

Tony Rackauckas, who campaigned for office last fall on the promise of improving the county’s child-support collections, called the vote “terrible” and said he was shocked that three of Orange County’s four state senators supported the bill.

Sen. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), who represents parts of South County, was the only member of the Senate to vote against the bill. Sens. John Lewis (R-Orange), Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove) and Ross Johnson (R-Irvine) voted for it.

The bill, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, would create a statewide network of child-support offices. In a speech in the Senate, Burton called the current system a disgrace.

Though it has improved since the years when it ranked near the bottom among the state’s 58 counties, Orange County still does not collect a dime for qualified children in nearly 85% of the 142,000 cases in its files.

But Rackauckas warned Friday that the solution might be worse than the problem.

“I feel personally accountable for child support in this county,” he said. “If you have a state-run agency, you’ll be trading an elected official for a nonelected bureaucrat who answers not to the voter but to someone in Sacramento.”

The Orange County child-support division, with 14 attorneys and a support staff of more than 500, accounts for 38% of the $78 million annual budget of the district attorney’s office. The $30 million earmarked for the division each year is an important source of income for the office, which recoups nearly 70% of money spent on child-support enforcement from the federal government.

Rackauckas said concerns about staffing levels and funding do not play a role in his opposition to the legislation, a parallel version of which is awaiting a vote in the Assembly, where opposition promises to be fierce. The influential California District Attorneys Assn. this week hired a lobbyist with close ties to Gov. Gray Davis to fight the proposal. Davis has not taken a position on the issue yet.

Rackauckas echoed his fellow district attorneys’ opposition.

“I think child-support collection will suffer,” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can to convince legislators who are on this train that they are wrong.”

He said the diversion of resources to turning over case files and training new staff would alone be a blow to collection rates.

Others who have been tangled up in the system for years, though, said anything would be better than the status quo.

For Phil Rowland, who is locked in a battle with the Orange County district attorney over support of a 14-year-old child he has always insisted is not his, the chance that the system will be changed seems his only hope. The child was born to a woman whom Rowland dated briefly when he played in an O.C. rock band.

“The way it is now, I can’t win,” said the South Pasadena man, whose next court date is June 11. “No one will listen to me.”