Letters to the Editor
ACS Bottom-Up Accountability

To the Editor:

Abuse and fatality among the neediest of nurturing is the peg of the August 2007 report by the Department of Investigation on the Administration for Children's Services - but the clinically objective title. "A [DOI] Examination of Eleven Child Fatalities and One Near Fatality," is promptly challenged by a puzzlingly patronizing subtitle, "A Joint Report by [DOI], Rose Gill Hearn, Commissioner; [and ACS], John B. Mattingly, Commissioner." (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doi/pdf/acsreport_aug092007.pdf ).

Regardless, the stuff and history hashed, rehashed, and cross-hashed in the report neither pardon nor palliate the absence of an earnest, efficient, and apolitical family and child welfare architecture within New York City government. Moreover, the report breaks no news and blazes no trail out of the lair of political lard and largesse.

For example, the Executive Summary mentions "... a disturbing pattern going back over a century where the report of a horrific child death would generate public outrage and criticism of the city's child welfare agency." But after a century, this is not "a disturbing pattern" at all - it is an evil estate, preserved and revivified by succeeding generations of self-absorbed politicians, and passed along, over and over again, to the detriment of succeeding generations of families and children.

Additionally, the Executive Summary pleads for an end to the historical cycle of agency name-changing and promises of reform. City government is urged to "... finally equip ACS with skilled investigators who have the training and experience to consult with and assist Caseworkers and their supervisors with investigations of serious criminal allegations." But this solution is a quantitative personnel gambit that cannot substitute qualitatively in the long term for Caseworkers and supervisors with broadened training, practice, skills, and knowledge, plus the ability to train new professional peers and to reap new opportunities to mature to advanced titles and salaries.

A final example of managerial posterior protection appears on pages 89 and 90 of the report - a bulleted list of 12 specific findings of "... significant flaws in the investigations conducted by ACS with respect to eight of the nine families detailed [in the report] ..." The list includes nine distinctly negative mentions of "ACS staff"; two distinctly negative mentions of "ACS supervisors"; and one distinctly negative mention apiece for "ACS employees," "ACS Caseworkers," "a Caseworker," and "ACS." Implausibly, there is no mention of any leadership failing among the 51 Deputy, Associate, and Assistant Commissioners whose meal tickets are etched into the 2007 ACS organization chart (http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/pdf/org - chart.pdf).

The DOI report puts nothing new under the sun. After three years in charge, ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly and his brigade of bureaucrats will probably continue to plunder the public payroll and rearrange furniture, until the sun finally sets on the erringly protective administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

MARK S. TRAVITSKY, Administrative Staff Analyst (Retired)