Jerry Regier has shown that he has the backbone and stamina to deliver, but let's hope he won't try to emulate his record on Oklahoma's failed child-welfare policies.

Jerry Regier, Gov. Jeb Bush's controversial choice to head the Department of Children and Families, by most accounts did an effective job cleaning out Oklahoma's fraud-infested health department. But Regier's record on child welfare is not nearly so laudable. Assuming Regier actually takes office -- so far Bush has resisted calls for Regier's withdrawal -- the new DCF chief should bring to Florida all the take-charge gusto he can muster but leave his failed policies back in Oklahoma.

"I'm here to stay," Regier recently said, hoping to quiet mounting criticism over his selection. "I believe that I can make an impact."

That's something Florida's child-welfare system desperately needs right now, and Regier's management success at the health department he formerly led suggests he has the backbone and stamina to deliver change. Already Bush and Regier have sent an encouraging signal by making their first priority locating missing foster children. The political controversy aside, what Floridians really need to know about Jerry Regier is this: In what direction is he prepared to take Florida?

Whatever it is, it should not be in Oklahoma's direction. On any number of indicators -- from the time kids languish in foster care, to the number herded into group homes -- Oklahoma's record on child-welfare is nothing to emulate. During Regier's term, Oklahoma's national ranking on child well-being fell to 40th worst among all states. Florida's ranking of 36th is certainly nothing to crow about either, but at least Florida's standing has been inching up, not down.

"We're not very good," one of Regier's former administrators told the Miami Herald, referring to Oklahoma's child-welfare agency. "We have a system here that's ripe for somebody to sue."

Like Florida's, Oklahoma's foster-care population is bursting at the seams. But far more Oklahoma kids than those in Florida or the nation suffer repeat abuse even after child-welfare workers have intervened, and Oklahoma's kids are three times as likely to be returned to foster homes after failed reunions with their families.

Not all of Oklahoma's problems can be laid at Regier's feet, however. As the Cabinet-level officer over a number of agencies, he was not in direct charge of child welfare. But even Regier admits that he was in a position to influence child-welfare policy and budgets in a broader sense. The fact that he chose not to intervene more aggressively suggests that he was satisfied with Oklahoma's trends, didn't know about them or didn't care. None of those possibilities is particularly encouraging. Regier will need to be far more assertive in watching DCF's trends -- and eliciting state leaders' help in correcting them -- if he truly is to make a difference.

Regier's Oklahoma suffers from the same basic problem that has long plagued Florida: overwhelmed and undervalued caseworkers with neither the time nor the tools to help protect children while rebuilding families. Regier will have to be prepared to go where he has not gone before and demand that the state pay up, even if it means disappointing the man who appointed him.

Bush has repeatedly trumpeted Regier's success at routing out bribe-taking officials and pay-collecting "ghost" employees, and Regier's reputation as a "firefighter" good at dousing political blazes obviously influenced Bush's choice. But Regier's new target is not fraud. It's decades of inattention by state leaders. The real question about Regier is whether he has the guts and independence to correct that costly failure.

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