Governor Enacts Overhaul of Child Support System

Gov. Gray Davis signed a battery of child support reforms Friday, stripping local prosecutors of their responsibility to collect money from deadbeat parents and laying the foundation for a new statewide system intended to turn around California’s record of running one of the worst programs in the country.

Flanked by parents and children owed support at a state child-care center in downtown Los Angeles, Davis cautioned that the new system will not be perfect, but that the changes will send an important signal.

“Too many parents are walking away from their responsibilities,” Davis said. “Parents will have two choices: They can meet their responsibilities and pay child support, or we’ll make them meet their responsibilities.”

The reforms have been long sought by child support advocates.

“I’ve been working on child support issues for 20 to 25 years hoping this would happen,” said Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), author of one of the main bills. “This is as good as it gets.”

Dramatic as the reforms may be, they are but a beginning, legislators say, setting the groundwork for further reform of a program that all quarters agree is broken.

Child support advocates hope that with district attorneys removed from the picture, it will be easier for a new state department of child support and local boards of supervisors to improve child support operations.

“It’s not going to be an easy project” to create the new agencies, said state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who co-wrote the Senate version of the legislation with Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco). “But we concluded it had to be done because the status quo was not acceptable.”

Nowhere is this issue more crucial than in Los Angeles, home to the largest and, according to state rankings, least effective child support operation in California.

At least one member of the Board of Supervisors is already hatching plans for the new agency.

“There has to be a shake-up,” said Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who will offer a motion at Tuesday’s board meeting to study increased privatization of the unit. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’re repainting the Titanic after it’s already sunk.”

Indeed, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office is partly responsible for a provision in the legislation allowing prosecutors to relinquish their child support duties before the January 2001 deadline. That move has sparked speculation that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, facing two challengers in the March primary, will try to divest himself from the program quickly.

At the state level, all eyes are on Davis to see whom he selects to run the new Department of Child Support, which will be formed Jan. 1 and must formulate new performance standards for counties and provide guidance on the construction of a statewide computer.

Davis’ involvement in the issue dates back at least 12 years, when as state controller he got the Franchise Tax Board involved in collecting some child support. With the bills signed Friday, the board will have a much greater role.

The transfer of child support duties is creating muted anxiety among elected officials, who are wary of hitching their fortunes to a chronically troubled operation. State Controller Kathleen Connell sparred with Davis last month over the tax board’s involvement in child support. In an interview Friday, Connell said she is committed to improving collections and glad the reforms are signed, but stressed that the board is only part of the new child support system.

Los Angeles County supervisors have also been hesitant to get too involved in the program. Some supervisor aides privately said they had hoped the program stayed with the district attorney.

“No one really wants this kind of responsibility,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who last year proposed moving the program from Garcetti’s office to another county agency only to find that none wanted it. “The person who takes it on is going to be beleaguered and criticized. But I’m not upset about having it.”

One reason people shy away from child support, some skeptics say, is that it may be tougher to increase collections than advocates hope because most debtor parents are impoverished or difficult to find.

Legislators “have now raised expectations that they’re going to improve the system,” said Richard Bennett, a fathers rights lobbyist. “And if these reforms don’t do that, they’re going to have to pay the political price.”

Davis said he is aware of the political risks.

“Here’s your choice,” he said. “You can sit by and do nothing and pay ever escalating federal fines [because of problems in the program] or you can do your level best and try to organize a very disorganized system and try to collect more child support for the people who desperately need it.”

The bills signed Friday embody the longtime hopes of child support advocates that were blocked by politically powerful district attorneys under prior administrations. Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration was blamed for the state’s unsuccessful attempts to build a statewide child support computer system.

After a Times series last year revealed that Los Angeles’ child support office was ranked the worst in the state, failing to collect in nine out of 10 cases and billing thousands of innocent men, reforms gained new momentum.

Analysts have long noted that despite the toughest child support laws in the nation, California long had one of the worst child support records. That was blamed on demographics and, more notably, the fragmented nature of the state’s program, where 58 district attorneys ran operations with little oversight from Sacramento.

The new laws first take the program from prosecutors and give it to new county offices, to be kept on a tight leash by the new state agency.

Secondly, it authorizes the tax board, with oversight from the new agency, to build a federally mandated statewide computer system, taking responsibility away from the Health and Welfare Data Center, which was responsible for two unsuccessful attempts to automate child support. Federal penalties for failing to have a computer in place could reach $300 million by 2003.

Two more reforms are waiting on the governor’s desk: a measure by Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley) allowing parents to appeal child support errors at administrative hearings, and a multifaceted bill by Assemblyman Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles) that deals with a number of due process issues.

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Child Support Reforms

Bills signed by Gov. Gray Davis

Strip district attorneys of responsibility for child support collections and move the task to new county offices as of Jan. 1, 2001.

Create a Department of Child Support Services to set tougher standards for child support offices and increase role of Franchise Tax Board in collecting money from ;delinquent parents.

Make Franchise Tax Board and Department of Child Support Services responsible for building a statewide computer system.

Bills on Davis’ desk would:

Allow parents to challenge administrative child supoort actions, such as billing, collections and distributions, through an administrative hearing.

Prevent child support agencies from billing parents for three years retroactively if their children receive welfare; they would be billed for only one year.