Child Support

* Re “Garcetti Defends Child Support Unit,” Nov. 18:

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti has responded to complaints about men who did not actually father children but were forced anyway to pay child support by saying this occurred only after the men failed to contest court orders in a timely manner. In an earlier article, a number of the complainants said they had not been made aware of the proceedings against them, and Garcetti said that inconveniencing a few innocent people was a cheap price to pay for solving the problem of nonpayment of child support. Mr. Garcetti, what part of being innocent don’t you understand?

THOMAS E. LOCKE

North Hollywood

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I thought the objective of the child support unit was to collect delinquent payments and distribute the funds appropriately. To have $18 million of undistributed funds seems outrageous. The supervisors should have held Garcetti’s feet to the fire on this one and not adjourned the meeting until he adequately addressed this issue. I can understand waiting until Dec. 8 for an overall plan to improve the program, but a scheduled date for fund distribution and/or a maximum fund retention level should have been established prior to the meeting’s adjournment.

Finally, to allow fragmentation of the program responsibilities by offloading segments to other departments is one way to destroy the entire program. Because “if everyone is responsible then no one is responsible.”

ALAN M. KRANE

Los Angeles