Local News in Brief : Lax Child Support Enforcement Hit

Three of every four women who ask the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to help them collect overdue child support payments fail to get it, according to a report by the Los Angeles County Child Support Task Force.

Only one in seven of those women, the coalition of women’s groups said, ever gets a penny of what she is owed by a delinquent father.

At a Santa Monica press conference, task force leaders called Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner “grossly negligent” and declared that Los Angeles County, which has almost 300,000 active child support cases, is well below state and national averages in almost every aspect of collection.

“I have friends in other states and they send men to jail for not paying their child support,” said Regetter Burton, 26, who complained that her estranged husband has not made support payments for the two daughters she is raising on welfare.

Reiner referred requests for comment to Asst. Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, who said some of the criticism was valid and contended that Reiner has unsuccessfully lobbied for money for an up-to-date computer system and for the right to turn family support collections over to professional bill collectors.