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Butterworth To Leave DCF

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 30, 2008

TAMPA - Bob Butterworth, who was hand-picked by Gov. Charlie Crist to straighten out the beleaguered Florida Department of Children & Families, resigned Tuesday, leaving many local child welfare advocates surprised and saddened.

"It's a tough blow," said Jeff Rainey, chief executive officer of Hillsborough Kids Inc., the private agency that oversees local foster care and adoptions for the state. "That guy has done wonders, more than our state could ever ask for in such a short time."

Butterworth, 65, plans to return to his law practice and possibly teach part time. First, he'll take a few days off and visit colleges with his daughter, who is a high school senior.

Butterworth officially became DCF's secretary in January 2007. He plans to leave Aug. 15. Crist said he hopes to have a replacement by then. He made no mention of potential replacements.

Butterworth said he had agreed from the start to stay on the job for only 18 months. The condition was never publicly stated, he said, so he could make the changes the governor wanted.

"Otherwise, people would just say 'I'm not going to do it, I'll just wait him out,'" Butterworth said.

His announcement caught even fellow DCF administrators off guard.

"I had no clue until yesterday," said Nick Cox, DCF's regional director in Tampa. "With everything he's been doing and the intensity he's been doing it with, I thought he would continue for a while longer."

Butterworth made headlines statewide when he agreed to take the job amid a high-profile legal battle with Florida courts over DCF's refusal to move mentally ill inmates from the jails to state hospitals.

Butterworth headed negotiations with judges, public defenders, state attorneys, sheriffs and mental health providers. He then took his 35 years of political experience into the state Legislature and worked with the governor and lawmakers, winning an additional $11 million to pay for more state hospital beds that helped eliminate a waiting list for inmates.

He created a task force last summer after the disappearance of 2-year-old Courtney Clark, whose mother took her from state custody and was gone for four months before a caseworker reported the girl missing.

The task force changed the way the state oversees children who are put into the custody of family friends by increasing the monitoring. It also changed the way law enforcement agencies take reports about missing children.

The group also reviewed the private agency in charge of Courtney's care, which resulted in the Sarasota Family YMCA losing its state contract to provide child welfare services in Pinellas and Pasco counties.

Butterworth and his right-hand man, George Sheldon, also created a program that employs more than 150 former foster children at DCF.

Transparency Brought To DCF

Butterworth said he is most proud of bringing open government to DCF, long shrouded in confidentiality laws and secrecy that often kept the public from understanding child welfare issues, which in turn hurt the agency's image.

"There is a lot you can disclose and you should disclose," said Sheldon, Butterworth's longtime friend and safety director for DCF. "The whole commitment to transparency made a huge difference in how the department was perceived and with how people within the department saw themselves."

Under Butterworth's leadership, DCF even joined media outlets in fighting to open records for public inspection.

He also brought a level of respect to the agency, which often was hailed as one of the worst social service agencies in the nation, Sheldon said. Butterworth insisted on what Crist called the "Two Sense Strategy," which called upon DCF employees to act with a sense of urgency and common sense.

Butterworth was paid $138,700 annually to oversee 13,500 employees and a $2.8 billion budget that provided care for nearly 37,000 children. Under his leadership, the number of children in state custody dropped from 29,255 in January 2007 to 23,007 as of Tuesday.

"I really think it's the first time in 25 years that families and children and the department had a powerful leader," said Jim Mills, former executive director of Pinellas County's Juvenile Welfare Board. "It's a real shame he's leaving and I think a real setback for the department," Mills said.

But being DCF secretary "is always a temporary job," Cox said.

He Said He Wanted To Help

Butterworth replaced Lucy Hadi, who resigned in December 2006 after high-profile cases that resulted in her being held in contempt of court for leaving mentally ill inmates jailed instead of taking them to state hospitals.

Hadi took over for Jerry Regier, a former Gov. Jeb Bush appointee who resigned in the summer of 2004 after several child welfare disasters and an investigation into his dealings with private companies designing the state's software and child tracking system. Regier was cleared of wrongdoing.

He replaced Kathleen Kearney, a former circuit judge from Fort Lauderdale who succumbed to scandal after Florida made national headlines for losing children in state custody, including Rilya Wilson, a 5-year-old girl who was missing for 15 months before a caseworker discovered it.

When Butterworth took the job, the former Broward County sheriff, judge and the state's longest serving attorney general from 1987 to 2002 said people kept asking him why. It's political suicide, they told him.

He did it, he said, because he thought he could truly make the department better.

"It is time to pass the torch to a new secretary," Butterworth wrote in his resignation letter. "It's not that all the problems are solved. This agency will never be able to say, 'Mission Accomplished.'

"We only look at the accomplishments these past 19 months and say, 'Keep it going.'"

Tribune researcher Melanie Coon and reporter Catherine Dolinski contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.

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