Child Support Proposal Would Hurt Families, Bradbury Says

Although improvements are needed in the current system, Ventura County’s single-parent families who depend on monthly child support checks will be the ones to suffer if the state takes control of collections, according to the county’s top prosecutor.

“I can guarantee you if this goes to the state, kids are going to suffer,” said Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury. “They are absolutely going to get lost.”

Child support advocates are pushing for the state to take over collections, saying that district attorneys have done a poor job in this task. Authorities estimate that as much as $8 billion may owed to single-parent families statewide.

But Bradbury disputed the claim that unpaid collections are a statewide problem. He said many district attorneys are doing a good job, collecting at rates well above state and national averages, and they remain in the best position to enforce child support orders.

In Ventura County, prosecutors collect payments in about one-third of its 32,200 open cases, which is significantly higher than the statewide rate of 17% and the national rate of 21%.

With legislation speeding through Sacramento to strip away their control of child support collections, prosecutors are scrambling to come up with a compromise proposal that would leave them in charge of this duty.

District attorneys are scheduled to meet in Sacramento today to discuss an alternative bill that would mandate stricter state oversight but leave child support collection in their hands, said Bradbury, president of the California District Attorneys Assn.

Two child support bills that would hand over collections to the state are still being negotiated behind the scenes, Bradbury said.

“When cooler heads prevail and people are thoughtful about what is going on, it will end up staying directly in the district attorneys’ hands, or with county boards given authority to place the program in a county agency that they think can do the job best,” Bradbury said.

Bradbury’s predictions, however, are at odds with recent actions in the Legislature. The state Senate last week overwhelmingly approved a bill by President Pro Tem John Burton and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) to strip district attorneys of the job.

A parallel bill in the Assembly, sponsored by Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), appears to have bipartisan support, and backers are optimistic it will pass the lower house this week.

Both bills call for the creation of a state department to oversee child support and for offices to be established in each county. Still to be decided is whether the local offices would be run by the state or the counties.

Kuehl and Burton, a San Francisco Democrat, have the backing of child support advocates.

Bradbury admits that the state’s 58 district attorneys must share some of the blame for problems in the system. Collection of unpaid child support has not been a high priority for some prosecutors, he said.

But other factors contribute to the poor performance, Bradbury said, from a Legislature that has “ignored child support in California for 30 years” to a flawed statewide computer system that drained time and energy from local departments.

State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) agreed that some counties are handling the job well. Santa Clara County does a great job, she said, while Ventura County’s performance is “fair.”

Although she voted in favor of Burton’s bill, Wright said she is leery of creating a new state agency. It may make more sense to designate a state authority that can either approve or reject the plan of county-level collection divisions.

District attorneys should be able to keep the responsibility, but “they are going to have to toe the line,” Wright said.

The district attorneys association is lobbying legislators to push an alternative to Burton’s bill, Bradbury said. In one option being discussed, counties would be given discretion to keep child support collection with the district attorneys who are doing a good job. In poorly performing counties, the duties would be farmed to another local agency, such as a social services department.

The state, meanwhile, would closely monitor each county’s performance and impose sanctions on those that do not meet certain criteria, he said. In two or three years, the Legislature would revisit the issues to make sure that improvements are occurring.

Bradbury declined to discuss which legislators the district attorneys association is approaching to push the compromise legislation.