Opinion: Closer oversight of DCF

House Speaker Tom Feeney made the right decision this week in creating a special committee to oversee the state's beleaguered child-welfare agency. Done correctly, the inquiry can cast light on continuing problems at the agency and spur needed improvements. But this should be a serious and thoughtful quest, not a vehicle for bashing the Department of Children and Families. Lawmakers should understand that correcting deficiencies at the agency is as much up to them as to DCF itself.

Feeney took the unprecedented step after months of unfavorable news reports about irregularities and lax management at DCF. The bipartisan committee he appointed, to be chaired by Rep. Sandra Murman, R-Tampa, will study the quality of DCF's own oversight, the agency's shrinking but still enormous child-abuse backlog, and allegations that foster children in Central Florida were inappropriately housed in a facility for the mentally ill. Getting to the bottom of those critical issues is essential, even if some of the blame turns out to fall on the Legislature.

Murman has already set a constructive tone by recognizing that lawmakers may be called upon to provide more funding for DCF. Lack of money may not be the sole cause of what Feeney called the "unresolved residue" of problems at the agency, but it is a big part of it. With urging from Gov. Jeb Bush, lawmakers have poured significant sums into DCF in recent years, but those increases must be viewed in context. They've come after a decade of severe underfunding -- and during years of enormous growth, both in Florida's population and in child-abuse reports. They've also come at the expense of other key parts of DCF's budget, including preventive and rehabilitative services for families and oversight of providers.

"We found that years of sacrificing administrative dollars to the good of additional service funding for clients has caused us to fall behind in meeting our basic oversight and monitoring responsibilities," DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney warned lawmakers last fall, well before the current troubles.

Florida's children and families could benefit from closer legislative oversight of DCF, but only if lawmakers own up to their share of responsibility for the problems they confirm.

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