Jerry Regier is moving past the controversy over his appointment by focusing on finding missing children and finding adequate funding for his troubled agency.

After all the controversy surrounding his nomination, Jerry Regier is off to a good official start as the new head of the Department of Children and Families. Barely two weeks into the job, he has made notable headway in locating Florida's missing foster children. He also has come forward with a bold recommendation for new investments in his agency's workers and services.

Regier wants an extra $221-million for child welfare next year, a 26 percent increase, to help reduce caseloads, raise caseworker salaries to just above the national average and double the funding for key prevention programs such as Healthy Families Florida. The requested budget increase is a long way from becoming reality, but Regier's activism should give Floridians some reason to hope that better days are ahead for the long-beleaguered DCF and the children and families it serves.

Regier came to office with a vow to find Florida's missing foster children, and he appears to be making good on his pledge. In recent days, DCF has located 83 of the nearly 500 kids who have run from foster care or been taken away by friends or relatives. Regier is beginning to do what should have been done long ago: confirm the location and safety of every single foster child under the state's care. He has been helped by a law-enforcement task force called last month by Gov. Jeb Bush, and by a Tallahassee court decision relaxing confidentiality rules.

Even that tentative success is no small accomplishment for a man whose Florida career almost was over before it began. Though his past writings on corporal punishment and women's roles remain troubling, Regier has, so far, kept his focus on his public duties, not his ideological preferences. That's as it should be. As Regier himself has acknowledged, the DCF leader has more than enough challenges to keep him busy without inviting unnecessary controversy or distractions.

After asking the right questions during his recent statewide "listening tour," Regier developed the ambitious budget plan that could boost child safety and confidence in DCF.

"It's a large request, [but] we're in crisis," Regier said. "Unless we address that crisis, we're going to continue to see events and issues that none of us wants to face."

The governor's own Blue-Ribbon Task Force documented that DCF's workers are underpaid and overworked. Until that changes, the vacancies and tragedies will continue. Bush this week said he supports higher caseworker salaries and more prevention, and it is his responsibility to push for the increases Regier has suggested.

Regier is emerging from the cloud that accompanied his nomination by doing his job in a responsible way. Now will Florida's lawmakers do theirs?

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