Audit Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Recommendations 8

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  Child Support An audit of this program is mandated by Section 10602.5 of the Collection Welfare and Institutions Code. Program The Contract Auditor concluded that: · Certain organizational improvements have been made within the last year. · Work methods and procedures, and related staffing levels, are not adequate in all areas to effectively process the current case load on a timely basis, resulting in a significant backlog of partially processed cases. · Management Reports are generally inadequate and do not provide accurate information regarding the effectiveness of the program. · All delinquent payments are not identified and collected on a systematic and timely basis. · The County is presently in technical violation of Federal IV-D regulations in several areas. SUMMARY OF MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS Case processing — Regional Office (No. 1-1) Improve the quality and accuracy of reported statistical information. (No. 1-2) Systems and procedures should be developed and standard- ized for all the Regional Offices. (No. 1-3) Establish and implement guidelines and procedures for closing and purging cases at the Regional Offices. (No. 1-4) Develop a pre-interview questionnaire to be filled out by the complaining witness to shorten interview time; and, separate the interview function from the case follow-up and investigation function. (No. 1-5) Mail should be processed on a timely basis at the Regional Offices. (No. 1-6) Replace the Investigator-in-Charge at each Regional Office with a qualified and experienced administrative office manager. (No. 1-7) Implement improved case review procedures at Regional Offices experiencing a high rate of returned cases. (No. 1-8) Undertake a major method and work measurment program designed to develop revised standards for staff planning and performance evaluation. (No. 1-9) Review the Regional Offices for possible improvements to office layout and determine need for additional office space. (No. 1-10) Develop and implement a reorganized case filing system at all Regional Offices. 16 (No. 1-11) Case control cards should be typed and filed on a timely basis after the initial interview with the complaining witness. (No. 1-12) The supervising child support investigator should be made responsible for insuring that all cases are reviewed every ninety days. Case Processing — Central Office (No. 1-17) The District Attorney should give the highest priority to the conversion of existing cases in accordance with the require- ments of Title IV-D. (No. 1-18) Carefully consider increasing available manpower resources in order to process additional child support cases. (No. 1-19) Establish procedures within the Civil Process Section which will insure the timely serving of all court processes. (No. 1-20) Controls over the physical movement of cases should be strengthened. (No. 1-21) Mail received for cases "out of file" should be filed in a separate file by defendant name. Payment Collection and Distribution (No. 1-24) The Court Trustee should enforce additional output controls in the Input/Output Control Unit. (No. 1-25) The Court Trustee should institute better controls over funds released from the suspense account. (No. 1-26) The Court Trustee in conjunction with the clerk of the court and the Bureau of Child Support Operations office should initiate additional controls to insure that all data is properly entered into the Court Trustee System. (No. 1-27) The Court Trustee should develop formal written procedures for follow-up of suspense items. (No. 1-28) The Court Trustee should maintain follow-up documentation for each suspense account case. (No. 1-29) The Court Trustee in conjunction with the Bureau of Child Support Operations, should evaluate the feasibility of instituting a central case numbering system. (No. 1-32) The Court Trustee should enforce procedures to insure that all returned warrants are entered into the suspense account immediately after they are received. Delinquency Identification and Processing (No. 1-33) The Court Trustee in conjunction with the Bureau of Child Support Operations and the Data Processing Department should initiate action to comply with federal regulation P.L. 93-647, Section 303.6. (No. 1-34) The Court Trustee in conjunction with the Data Processing Department should evaluate the cost effectiveness and feasi- bility of more effective use of the existing automated system in converting Family Law cases, established prior to May 1, 1976, to the new delinquency identification system. Automated Child Support Enforcement System (ACSES) (No. 1-35) Continue the implementation of the ACSES project according to the System Implementation Work Plan. (No. 1-36) Consideration should be given to restricting and monitoring access to ACSES information through both physical and programmed controls over CRT terminals.
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  County Budgetary This function within County government was reviewed because of Process the major role it plays in the allocation of resources to governmental programs and activities and the overall County management process. The Contract Auditor concluded that:
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  a. Personnel This Personnel System review was conducted because of the cost Organization, impact and budgetary considerations of personnel salaries, benefits, Policies and and other personnel programs in the County. There has not been a Practices previous Grand Jury review of this area. The Contract Auditor concluded that: The task of administering personnel programs for some 80,000
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  Review of the Los of the size and complexity of the County's health care system and Angeles County because of the magnitude of escalating costs to the County taxpayers Hospitals associated with providing medical care to County patients. The Contract Auditor concluded that: · The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, as its primary concern, provides a full range of quality medical services to the medically indigent patient of the County and views its role as the "hospital of last resort." Unfortunately, the Department has given insufficient attention to financial matters, particularly in the areas of financial screening, billing and management of ac- counts receivable. In our opinion, there appears to be significant room for improvement in these areas. · The Board of Supervisors should consider placing in the position of Director of Health Services, currently vacated, an administrator with a strong financial background. · The total cost to the County taxpayers for providing health care through the eight County hospitals was approximately $169 million in 1975 and $211 million in 1976, which represented a cost per capita in Los Angeles County of $24 and $30, respectively. Additionally, in 1975, operating costs per in-patient day and 6% 16%, and visit were approximately out-patient respectively, higher than the same costs incurred by the non- county hospitals they selected for comparisons. · Sufficient patient financial information, such as correct name, address and party responsible for payment, is not always obtained from patients prior to their leaving the facilities. Additionally, Medi-Cal patient claims are not being submitted on a timely basis, resulting in an excess unbilled claim backlog. Also, private insurance companies are often not billed for services rendered to their enrollees or subscribers. Many financial patient records in the billing departments at County
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  County Data This review of the County Data Processing Department (DPD) was con- Processing ducted because of the major role it plays in the formidable and complex Department task of providing County management with proper and adequate data processing support. The Contract Auditor concluded that: · The centralization of County-wide data processing activities is being conducted without an overall master plan. · The present controls over the DPD "Billing System" should be improved to better monitor development and maintenance expen- ditures.
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  Number of suspects not indicted 17
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  Number of witnesses heard 816
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  Days devoted to hearings 84 30 B. Review of all The Committee receives and gives careful consideration to all Correspondence correspondence from the public. These letters are always held in the Involving stictest confidence. The Committee believes that this is an appropriate Criminal place for citizens to come with problems after they have gone through Matters the proper agencies such as the police department or the District Attorney's Office without satisfaction. The Grand Jury has its own investigator, and in appropriate cases will initiate its own investigation. At other times a request may be made by the Committee to the respon- sible agency to initiate or reopen an investigation. During the first 10 months of our term, the Criminal Complaints Committee received and reviewed 76 letters alleging criminal conduct. The Committee ordered 31 formal investigations based upon these letters. C. Jury Selection The following letter was sent to the Board of Supervisors on April 20, Process 1977: The Criminal Complaints Committee of the 1976-77 Grand Jury has studied the petit jury selection process as a part of its review of the functioning of the Criminal Justice System. Based upon the Com- mittee's study, the Grand Jury has concluded that the one-day, one- trial jury selection process, which is used with success in many large counties, should be adopted on a limited experimental basis in Los Angeles County. The Committee's initial inquiries revealed that the existing petit jury selection process in Los Angeles County possessed a number of deficiencies. In many instances, individual jurors would spend their entire 30-day period without actually serving on any trial jury. This causes negative reactions from the jurors and from their employers. It also encourages these jurors and many others to offer excuses for not serving in the future. The present length of jury service, which averages approximately one month, causes many potential jurors to be excused because of hardship. This results in the remaining pool of citizens being repeatedly recalled for jury duty, which is unfair to them and restricts a broad community involvement and representation on petit juries. Jurors are presently paid by mail several weeks after the completion of their service. Each check must be individually calculated for the number of days of service and for the individual's mileage. This necessitates a significant staff to administer. There is presently no routine process in existence to contact jurors at their homes so that extra jurors could be called in, or other jurors excused, as required. This results in the jury commissioner being required to summon excessive numbers of jurors each day to the courthouse to be certain that all contingencies are met. In its investigation, the Committee considered the previous research conducted on this topic by the 1975-76 Grand Jury. In addition, the Committee conducted personal interviews with the Los Angeles County 31 Jury Commissioner and his staff, judges, present and past petit jurors, and a number of representative employers and attorneys. Materials were obtained on the petit jury selection process used in counties in Detroit, Michigan; Houston, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Miami, Florida; and New York City, New York. The Committee was most impressed by reports on the one-day, one- trial jury selection process which has been operating successfully over the last five years in a number of jurisdictions. In this process, an individual juror receives a notification to report to the courthouse on a given date. If that date causes difficulty, it can be changed by a phone call. On the day the juror reports, he will fill out a background questionnaire and receive an orientation, usually by video-tape. The juror is then placed in a jury pool and becomes available for call to a courtroom. If the juror is not serving on a trial jury at the end of the day, he is released from further service. If he is serving on a trial jury, he continues to serve until the completion of the case and is then released from further service. There are many advantages to this process. Potential jurors need not appear at the courthouse until the day of their jury service. A juror has either been released at the end of his day of service or knows precisely how long his service will extend. A greater degree of citizen participation exists because virtually everyone can plan for a one-day or a short term period of jury service. The phone contact system allows extra jurors to be called in, or unneeded jurors to be scheduled for other days, so that the varying court workloads can be properly met. Since jurors serve for one period of time, whether released at the end of the first day or at the end of a trial, they can be paid immediately at the end of their service by checks in standard amounts. The background questionnaires, which include the routine questions asked by attorneys during voir dire, greatly expedite the jury selection process when they are made available to the judge and to the attorneys beforehand. According to the published reports from Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan and Harris County (Houston), Texas, the implementation of the one-day, one-trial process has effected a net cost reduction of 14%. There is no reason that similar savings would not accrue to Los Angeles County. Before implementing the one-day, one-trial jury selection process countywide, it would be advisable to implement it on an experimental basis in one of the seven branch courts for a trial period of one year. At the end of the experimental period, a detailed analysis should be made to determine whether or not the process should be implemented throughout the County. RECOMMENDATION The Los Angeles County Grand Jury recommends that the Board of Supervisors implement, on an experimental basis, the one-day, 32 one-trial jury selection process for a period of one year in one of the branch courts. D. DIRECT The Committee determined to examine the problem of over-crowded CALENDARING court calendars in the Central Judicial District which appears to be impeding the rights of defendants and the people to a speedy trial. The law requires that felony cases commence trial after the filing of an Information in Superior Court. The Criminal Complaints Committee compliments the Public Defender and the District Attorney on their research into direct calendaring and vertical trial assignment. We support their efforts. In the past three years there has been a decrease in the number of felony criminal filings in the Central District. Year 1974 1975 1976 Filings 9949 9495 8615 The amount of time for the completion of a case has increased. The number of cases extending beyond the (60 day) last day status limitation has been increasing: 1975 - 290 cases; 1976 - 422 cases. Other factors, case law and legislation, also have impact on the length of criminal cases. The Central Judicial District handles 44.6% of the cases in the County Judicial District. From previously mentioned statistics, the trial process is slowing down. From outlining the present calendaring procedure in the Central District of the criminal courts system, it seems obvious that there are steps that could be eliminated. Following the police filing in the District Attorney's Office, the defen- dant is arraigned in Municipal Court. At this time, a filing deputy district attorney has reviewed the case and a deputy public defender has been assigned to the case. Within ten days, a preliminary hearing must be scheduled. A second deputy district attorney is assigned if the defendant is held to answer. Following the preliminary hearing, the case is assigned to a trial department in the Superior Court. In the Superior Court, a second deputy public defender is assigned and another deputy district attorney is assigned. When the case is ready for trial, a request is sent to the Criminal Courts Coordinator where the case is to go to trial within ten days. As cases are ready for trial, they are assigned to available open courts. When the case goes to trial, a deputy district attorney in that trial department is assigned the case. There is a possibility of five deputy district attorneys and two deputy public defenders being involved in one case before the case is completed through trial. Two or three separate judges, one for pre-trial motions and another for trial, and if the case is con- tinued, the possibility of still another judge, hear the same case. We suggest that the following changes should be made to streamline the court procedure: