County Attorney Bill Montgomery to Head Governor's Child Safety Task Force to Fix Mess at CPS

• Out of the frying pan … poor children. Nothing much can be done for his own son, but it is the most ugly and stupid cruelty to expose children to Bill Montgommery or any self-identified antiphilliac.

• Seriously...there is not a SINGLE attorney on the panel who has ever been involved in a CPS fiasco.  This panel is sandwiched between a joke and a fart.  Good job...Guv.

• So much for officials in positions of trust passing judgement on families and children:   Texas judge beating video causing outrage - CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57316508/texas-judge-beating-video-causing-outrage/

• What's Steve Twist's professional expertise in handling family matters and children? He brags about starting Truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing which has put Arizona's people into prison for decades on non-violent, first offenses. The make-up of this commission is disturbing.

• Prosecutors should not be in a position to determine what happens to children and their families. This belongs outside of law enforcement that broad-brushes ALL into the juvenile/criminal justice system which are also broken. MCAO should fix the broken criminal justice system and reform Arizona's draconian mandatory minimum sentencing that puts non-violent first offenders into prison for decades. The families are one incident away from this.

• This is the newest campaign witch-hunt for the "vote".

• For 26 yrs, the cons who run this state have done absolutely nothing to EFFECTIVELY protect the children of this state and now, we're expected to believe that the same people who refused to fund transplants, kicked people off AZHCCSS, cut education funding, etc ACTUALLY GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE CHILDREN. The only way these pigs will do anything beneficial for children is if the kids break open their piggy banks for a little bribe money.

• That'll fix things.  Have a bunch of lawyers meet once in awhile, mostly not, and present a white washed stack of neat papers that say nothing.   Problem solved.

• What GED Jan and the dumbass politicians at the Legislature need to do is provide more funding to CPS so that more workers can be hired and help ease the burden...

• So representatives of the same organizations that created the mess now are supposed to find a way out of it?  It didn’t work when former Gov. Napolitano named her OBRC (Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commission) in 2003, and, with a couple of exceptions, the bunch Gov. Brewer has picked is worse.   Most of them want more of the same: Tear apart even more families, consign even more children to the chaos of foster care.  That’s exactly what Arizona has been doing since 2003.  While nationwide the number of children torn from their homes during that time declined 15 percent, in Arizona it soared by 70 percent, with no end in sight.   Instead of making children safer, it only further overloaded caseworkers, leaving them even less time to find children in real danger.  So it’s no wonder even as more and more children were taken away, deaths of children “known to the system” actually increased.   There are real alternatives.  My organization offered a series of ideas for real reform – reforms with a proven record of success – when we released our 2007 report on Arizona child welfare.  It’s available here: http://bit.ly/irF2Ny   And there’s an update of sorts here: http://bit.ly/vsIOIv   Richard Wexler Executive Director National Coalition for Child Protection Reform www.nccpr.org

• Arizona government has a long history of funding law enforcement and prisons before wanting to fund programs to benefit families and children.  Social programs are seen as "Socialist" and suspect in a state that praises self sufficiency over looking after the welfare of others.  What or leaders seem to forget is that if children and families can get help when the need it, those children are less likely to end up in jail or a crime statistic. Arizona Child Protective Services has been badly underfunded for decades.  This means that parents who can hide their abuse from CPS investigators can easily be dropped from the system  Governor Brewer and the Legislature can save the state money in the long term by increasing the CPS budget for a trial 3-5 year period, hire more investigators, increase the number of emergency placement and foster homes, and see if the number of child abuse deaths drop.

• I can only hope for the children's sake this does not become politicized.  I agree that CPS has been underfunded and staffed, and I fear what would happen if the police state took over.  Private prisons, er I mean orphanages housing legions of children forcefully removed from their parents.  CPS properly funded at least would try and help council parents and family's.

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