California Government Agencies

In a stunning bipartisan rebuke, the state Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill to strip California's district attorneys of their responsibility for collecting child support. The bill by President Pro Tem John Burton and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) to create a new statewide network of child support offices passed 29 to 1 after an emotional speech on the Senate floor in which Burton accused district attorneys of scuttling past reforms.

With a consensus building that California's child support system should be taken away from district attorneys, an Assembly committee approved a sweeping reform bill Tuesday and set the stage for a showdown between key legislators and prosecutors. The 6-2 vote Tuesday along party lines by the Assembly Human Services Committee is significant because it propels a concept now endorsed by the leadership of both houses of the Legislature: stripping the program from the control of district attorneys.

The state's battle against advancing fire ants could begin as soon as the first week of April, according to a long-awaited plan released Friday that gives counties and cities some responsibility for curtailing the ant's spread. The plan calls for treating areas infested with fire ants with ground application of two types of pesticides.

A key committee of the state Legislature overwhelmingly agreed Tuesday that California's beleaguered child support system should be taken away from district attorneys and put under the auspices of a new state department. The 6-1 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee marks the first time in years that any serious progress has been made in Sacramento to strip the child support program from county prosecutors.

Even as an upbeat and reassuring Gov. Gray Davis reported last month that the state was 75% along in fixing its Y2K computer problems, technology experts throughout California's government were dubious. The very next day a report from the state auditor suggested an almost opposite conclusion. And a week later, puzzled lawmakers were told at a legislative hearing that the two assessments were "apples and oranges."

State authorities said Wednesday that California has completed nearly three-quarters of the Y2K repairs on computers critical to public health and safety functions. But Gov. Gray Davis also warned that state government faces a major challenge in correcting remaining problems before they threaten to disrupt essential services at the start of next year. On Wednesday, Davis ordered a halt to any state government computer project not related to the Y2K problem.

The Davis administration's plodding pace in making major appointments has left leaders of California's lottery paralyzed, unable to make any major decisions even though its sales are slumping severely. For most state agencies, Gov. Gray Davis' deliberateness has not created serious problems, because holdover appointees of his predecessor, Pete Wilson, are filling in until replacements are named.

He's said it until he's blue in the face, even red in the face: Nobody makes a move until he gives the OK. At one Cabinet meeting, Gov. Gray Davis actually sketched a flow chart for his agency secretaries. Trying to be both humorous and explicit, he drew a box labeled "governor" with connecting lines to 12 little boxes for the Cabinet members underneath. "I'm not appointing you to exercise your independent judgment. I'm appointing you to implement my judgment," Davis says he has told them.

Determined to elevate the stature and performance of California's child support programs, legislative leaders unveiled sweeping proposals Wednesday for a new Department of Child Support and authority for counties to decide if programs should stay with district attorneys or go to other agencies.