Those in the trenches of collection efforts familiar with urgency

Bill Gang

Saturday, May 2, 1998 | 5:02 a.m.

His office makes people happy or angry, content or sad. It hunts down deadbeat parents, takes away large chunks of their money and gives it to the ones who have been determined to need and deserve it -- redistributing wealth, as it were.

C.A. Watts, who heads the Clark County district attorney office's Child Support Division, has learned there is little gray in the job that affects tens of thousands of men, women and children. The division also handles more millions each year than some casinos.

The division collects the money many noncustodial parents have been ordered by the courts to pay for child support, but haven't managed to pay on their own.

The money, generally sent to the division by employers through wage garnishment, gets passed along to the custodial parents whether they are in Nevada or live out of state. It's all part of a nationwide system that started as a way to hold deadbeat parents accountable, no matter where they reside.

How Watts and his staff of 182 perform their job can determine if there is sufficient food on a child's table, new shoes to wear to school or whether a family's rent gets paid.

District Attorney Stewart Bell said the goal is to pass along the money they collect within 24 hours. But with $50 million coming through the office each year -- an average of $200,000 a day -- that turnaround time hasn't been attained. Instead it takes two days.

There are 41,000 active files that, unlike criminal cases, will likely stay active for years, or until the children involved reach age 18.

For all this, Clark County taxpayers pay only 13 percent of the division's $10 million budget. The other 87 percent is funded by the state and federal governments.