Supervisors Seek Report on Child Support Agency

With one prominent child support advocate calling for a federal investigation into Los Angeles County’s beleaguered child support collection program, the Board of Supervisors asked Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti on Tuesday to report within 30 days on the agency’s management and policies.

Although they attended the meeting, neither Garcetti nor his top aides addressed the supervisors’ concerns, which were prompted by a Times investigation of his Bureau of Family Support Operations. Garcetti also refused comment to The Times.

The district attorney did distribute a six-page memo listing new performance statistics, which he says show dramatic improvements in his office. The Times had requested documents that included such numbers as recently as Friday, but Garcetti’s office said they were not available.

Those numbers show that the operation collects in 20% of its 508,000 cases, Garcetti said. That percentage is virtually the national average, his memo added.

Garcetti’s calculations, however, do not include the hundreds of thousands of cases his office declared uncollectable and closed. When those cases are included in calculations, the rate drops to 13%.

The Times series cited a 7.6% collection rate on cases in which child support is currently owed--a measurement used by the supervisor-appointed Family Support Advisory Board. Garcetti’s new numbers--not including closed cases--show that figure increasing to 9% in the last year.

Garcetti’s memo also criticized the series for not mentioning the imminent opening of a new telephone call center or the agency’s efforts to improve operations in response to a Price-Waterhouse audit. The audit included findings that only 1.6% of all calls to the agency reached caseworkers.

During a brief discussion, supervisors spoke about the importance of the child support issue, noting that forums will be held this weekend and next. Garcetti’s office has told organizers that he would not attend those forums because of death threats.

“Every time we’ve had it we’ve had thousands turn out,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose office is sponsoring Saturday’s forum at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose office is sponsoring another forum at the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita on Oct. 24, said Garcetti’s office had apparently neglected to include invitations to the forum in the tens of thousands of bills it sends to noncustodial parents monthly.

“We hope the D.A. will personally attend the forum because this is an [important] issue,” Antonovich said. “We’ve had hearings here on this. We’ve had promises and yet we get rhetoric and not action.”

The board asked Garcetti to report within 30 days on the cases of individuals profiled in The Times. Other issues to be reported upon include allegations of the disposal of unopened mail, the closure of more than 240,000 cases, the misidentification of fathers, and the office’s practice of steering cases away from judicial officers who rule against them.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky recommended that the board, which already held hearings on child support, hold another in the wake of The Times series. “I think this is in the program’s best interest,” Yaroslavsky said. “I want to be able to take it to the next step.”

Minutes before the meeting, attorney and longtime child support advocate Gloria Allred read a letter she is sending to the federal grand jury seeking an investigation into Garcetti’s agency based on The Times series.

“I think that almost anybody could do a better job than Gil Garcetti is doing,” said Allred, who a decade ago headed a county task force on child support.

Accompanying Allred at the news conference were four women who said their child support cases had been mishandled.

One of those women, Linda L. Woodall, said she has waited 11 years for action on her case, yet has only received $1,400. She scoffed at Garcetti’s statements that the operation has improved,

“You bring him out here and let us talk to him,” she said.