St. Petersburg offices will handle child support cases, ending a contract with a local lawyer.
By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published July 2, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - Bucking the privatization trend in state government, Attorney General Charlie Crist will lease offices in downtown St. Petersburg and hire more than 50 employees to represent the state in child support cases in the Tampa Bay area.
Crist on Tuesday took control of 120,000 cases in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties. The decision ended a $3-million annual contract with St. Petersburg lawyer Myron Mensh, a Crist supporter and lifelong Republican who had done the work for 14 years.
"It's an important area, it's important to children, and it's something I feel strongly about," Crist said. "If we could do the work more efficiently and save the taxpayers money, I'm all about that."
Crist said he can save taxpayers about $300,000 a year by having lawyers on the state payroll to force parents to make child support payments.
"That's a bunch of garbage," said Mensh, a former prosecutor. "Any bureaucrat who wants to tell me they can run an office cheaper than private individuals, I would challenge that."
Child support enforcement is a growing enterprise in Florida. Mensh said his employees juggled 150 cases a day in Hillsborough alone, but he said he did the job with 35 workers, compared with the 50 or 55 Crist plans to hire.
The state said it had no complaints with Mensh's work. "We were satisfied with it," said Hal Bankirer, deputy director of child support enforcement in the Department of Revenue. State law allows the attorney general to decide whether to handle the work.
Hoping to hold onto the contract, Mensh said he enlisted help from Republican politicians and Brent Sembler, the son of Tampa developer Mel Sembler, a major Republican donor and U.S. ambassador to Italy. Mensh even offered to work for Crist as an assistant attorney general, but he said Crist's salary offer was too low.
"They offered me a salary that I wouldn't spit at. I said, "Sorry,' " Mensh said.
Crist's decision follows quiet lobbying by St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker that began with Crist's inauguration in January.
"It's a good thing for the city," Baker said. "The presence of the attorney general is a pretty important thing."
Crist, who already has a staff in Tampa, will lease 17,000 square feet, most of it on the top floor of a six-story building at 700 Central Ave. It gives the attorney general's office a presence in Crist's hometown for the first time. The building, owned by the ARC Group, is the former home of Franklin Templeton, an investment firm.
For the first three years of a 10-year lease the state will pay no rent, and in the fourth year, the rate will be $408,000 a year, or $24 a square foot. Crist's director of administration, Jerry McDaniel, said the ARC Group submitted the only bid.
McDaniel said the state hopes to move in by late September after the space is renovated and the staff is hired. The office will have 15 to 18 lawyers.
The lawyers will represent the state Department of Revenue in court proceedings in which delinquent or unemployed parents are forced to pay back child support payments. The state's interest is to make sure the money reaches the custodial parent. In some cases the state is seeking reimbursement under federal law for temporary assistance paid to those families.
Crist, a Republican, is adding to the government payroll at a time when Gov. Jeb Bush is aggressively shifting government functions to private companies.
But having state employees handle child support cases is a trend that began under Crist's predecessor, Democrat Bob Butterworth, after a series of failures in the early 1990s in Broward and other counties.
The attorney general represents the state in child support cases in Broward, Palm Beach and a string of counties surrounding Tallahassee. In Miami-Dade County, the state's largest, State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle's office does the work.
Private lawyers do the work everywhere else. Crist is determined to change that. In January, he plans to take over the work in Sarasota and DeSoto counties.
Social service agencies say Crist deserves the chance to prove he can do it for less.
"Up to now, we've had a fine system in this area," said Michael Bernstein of Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services in Clearwater, which seeks to find jobs as an alternative to jail for delinquent parents. "I'm sure the attorney general plans to keep up the quality of care. ... Let's see how he does."
