D.A. Drops Computer Child Support System

Hundreds of checks from deadbeat parents simply disappeared into an electronic void.

Thousands of files that could not be entered into the difficult new computer system sat backlogged, filling 16 bookshelves in the district attorney’s office.

And a demoralized group of five to 10 county child support employees spent their time fielding angry phone calls, rather than tracking down support payments.

Despite the threat of stiff federal sanctions, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury has decided to pull the plug on the state’s new glitch-ridden computer system that has thrown the Child Support Division’s accounting records into disarray, officials said Wednesday.

“It just became apparent that the problems with the system were so substantial it was just interfering with our ability to meet the needs of the children and families,” said Kevin J. McGee, chief assistant district attorney. “We just couldn’t do business that way.”

What’s more, Bradbury and some key assistants have gone to Washington, D.C., in part to explain why they are going to ignore a federal mandate to use the new centralized system.

With its plan to drop the so-called State Automated Child Support System, Ventura County, with at annual caseload of 36,000, will become the largest county to bail out since the system came on line last year.

With a well-intentioned federal law requiring all counties to tie in with an automated, integrated computer system by October, Ventura County officials say they had little choice but to mothball an old system and install the new one.

Congress, hoping to reduce welfare rolls by increasing child support enforcement, passed the Family Support Act in 1988. Under the threat of stiff sanctions, the act required all states to create a computer system for tracking child support cases. California’s deadline is Oct. 1--a deadline state officials estimate will be missed by as many as three years.

In 1992, California issued a contract with the Lockheed Corp. to design and implement the new system. Originally projected to cost $99 million, by last month--with a state-hired consultant listing about 1,400 glitches and fearing more lurking within--state officials raised the cost estimate to $305 million.

On Wednesday, Bradbury, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory D. Totten and Child Support Division Director C. Stanley Trom were in Washington to lobby Health and Human Services Department officials and California congressional representatives seeking leniency on the federal mandate.

The officials were part of a contingent of representatives from the California District Attorneys Assn., which has sent Gov. Pete Wilson a letter saying the system doesn’t work and is imposing financial harm on the 20 counties still using it.

The letter said that the system “completely fails to meet the business needs of the counties.”

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Larry Brown, executive director of the District Attorneys Assn., said Wednesday that Placer County also has decided to abandon the system and that the remaining California counties won’t touch it until the kinks are worked out.

He said that with 350 screens and 11 uses of the “F8” key, for example, it could take two to four years before the system functions properly.

“It’s not too much to ask that the district attorneys be provided with the best tools to get the job done,” he said.

Now that Ventura County has decided it will drop the system, the question becomes what to use as a replacement and how to keep the conversion process that could take until September from hurting recipients.

Reverting to the previous system would eliminate the need to retrain the agency’s 270 employees, but the county would still find itself in violation of the federal mandate.

Furthermore, county officials say, if the state decides to abandon the system, the state will pick up the bill to purchase an alternative. If the county makes that decision, the county pays.

McGee said the county will continue to seek the state’s financial help as it converts to a new system. Officials are looking at a number of options, but are focusing in on a computer network being used in Wyoming, he said.

Meanwhile, Child Support Division workers reportedly let out a collective cheer when officials announced last week that the new system would be abandoned.

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For months, they had battled with a system they said was far too slow and far too complex to be effective. The part of the system designed to help track down absentee parents by tapping into the large databases of major agencies such as the Franchise Tax Board and Division of Motor Vehicles never worked at all.

And although 98% of the roughly $3 million the county takes in each month has been redistributed without any problem, each month about 250 cases representing some $300,000 in payments essentially became lost in the system, workers and officials have reported.

Last February, the agency set up a special emergency bank account to cover checks for hardship cases. At times, officials could confirm that a child support payment was made, but not necessarily where the money went in the computer system. Accountants were even unable to print a monthly report showing how the $3 million that workers had collected was distributed each month.

“We’re too big a county to continue with this,” said Elizabeth M. Teague, the division’s supervising accountant. “We are just getting deeper and deeper into bad data.”

In dropping the system, Ventura County follows the lead of San Francisco County, which until opting out last month had been the second-largest county behind Ventura trying to make it work.

In San Francisco, employees spent a full month double checking every new case opened over a six-month period and auditing every transaction, officials there have said.