Suspicion Raised About Child Support Review

The state official once charged with monitoring California’s child support program said the state never fully investigated claims that Los Angeles County had falsified documents to reap millions in incentive funding.

Rather than investigate those allegations in 1993, Vivienne DuFour said state monitors concentrated on their routine review of whether the county was complying with technical performance guidelines.

Even that review found problems. Although Los Angeles claimed that it was in compliance with federal guidelines and eligible for full funding, the state found that it was out of compliance and not due the money.

In a letter to county officials last month, Richard Williams of the Department of Social Services said that a review still found “no evidence” of a county employee’s claim that documents were falsified to dress up Los Angeles’ performance.

But DuFour, who was in charge of that review, said it was never intended to determine whether falsification occurred. Indeed, DuFour, who reviewed allegedly falsified documents, said she suspected that Los Angeles had altered records.

“They’re not telling the whole story,” said DuFour, who now works for another state agency.

Her remarks come on the eve of a Board of Supervisors hearing today, where Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is expected to defend his child support program against a Times investigation that found the agency is grossly mismanaged, failing nine times out of 10 to collect support, while demanding money from men it knows are not the fathers.

In a lengthy report to supervisors, Garcetti’s office disputes recent criticism of its child support collections and practices. Garcetti’s report, among other things, notes that it collected a record $257 million this year and asserts that it is improving rapidly despite a caseload of impoverished parents.

“Approximately 90% of our total caseload are currently assisted or formerly assisted welfare recipients,” Garcetti’s report says. “Characteristically, these type of cases are the most difficult to collect on.”

As such, the report takes issue with The Times investigation into its collection rate and recent reports, by public and nonprofit agencies, that rank Los Angeles County at or near the bottom statewide in collections.

But in attempting to explain its low collection rate, the report not only blames a 6.8% unemployment rate but says that 48% of its noncustodial parents have no income and that an additional 18% earn less than $10,000 a year--numbers that one nationally known child support expert called absurd.

“If your unemployment is 6.8%, then half of your parents cannot be without any income. It is patently absurd,” said Paula Roberts of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington. “Even if every single unemployed person is a noncustodial parent in Garcetti’s system, I’ll bet you still don’t get as many people as he claims have no income.”

Indeed, Roberts said, national studies show that two-thirds of noncustodial parents have annual earnings of at least $20,000. And Los Angeles County data from the last census--taken when the economy was worse than now--showed that about two-thirds of single parents were not impoverished.

Added Roberts: “I have dealt with these folks long enough to know that they obfuscate a lot through their use of numbers. They may well be saying that they have no [income] information about noncustodial parents. That is not the same thing as saying these guys have no money.”

The report also omits the fact that counties with higher poverty rates than Los Angeles, such as Fresno, have better collection records. Although it says Los Angeles’ system is improving rapidly, the county is collecting the same share of the state’s child support--18%--as it did four years ago.

Garcetti’s report to the board also disputes charges by a former county analyst that documents were falsified to gain millions of dollars in incentive funding during the child support program’s performance review in 1993.

In its series, The Times cited John Erlinger’s charge that while working in the child support program, he witnessed employees alter records to make it appear the office was complying with federal guidelines. In a letter to county officials, Steven A. Sowders, head deputy district attorney for employee relations, said that based on an internal affairs inquiry, he found Erlinger’s allegations unfounded.

Sowders’ letter said the internal investigation was cut short because the office understood that “state auditors” were coming to review the allegations.

But there was no detailed examination by the state, said DuFour, who was in charge of the performance review process at the time.

Describing Erlinger as “very honest,” DuFour said that after reviewing documents supporting his allegations she asked the director of the state’s child support program, Leslie Frye, what should be done. They eventually settled on DuFour conducting a review of Los Angeles’ performance that year--not to determine whether there was fraud, but to ensure that the county was following federal policy.

DuFour said her office would have been unable to do an investigation of whether Los Angeles was attempting to defraud the federal government. “We’re not auditors,” she said. “We don’t get involved in that sort of thing.”

Instead, DuFour ordered a team to go to Los Angeles and, rather than double-checking Erlinger’s complaint, inspect the cases the county had submitted to see if it was in compliance.

The state examination in 1993 found Los Angeles to be out of compliance with federal guidelines and not eligible for the standard level of funding.

Mike White, who performed the review for the Department of Social Services, said it would have turned up evidence of falsification if there had been any. What it did show, he said, was that Los Angeles’ interpretation on whether it was following federal requirements differed sharply from the state’s.

“We felt they had never taken the action that was needed” in several cases the county said it was working, White recalled.

He said the fact that the county failed its evaluation showed they were not hiding problems behind falsified documents.