The head of Washington State’s family police agency explains his agency’s approach to families.

 

Washington State DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter

It boils down to: We don’t do a damn thing to keep families together and you can’t make us!

Here’s the thing about Ross Hunter, secretary of Washington State’s family police agency, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. He’s not good at sugarcoating the cruelty of some of his actions. 

● Recall how, when the COVID pandemic began he rushed to pander to the state’s worst, most selfish foster parents, at children’s expense. 

● Recall his callous response to KING-TV’s expose of how workers were treating some children in ways international human rights organizations describe as torture. 

● Recall how a majority of his own unionized employees said they want Hunter fired but they fell short of the two-thirds required to initiate a formal no-confidence vote.  (The state advisory board on juvenile justice also wants Hunter fired.) 

And now, in an interview with The Imprint he makes clear that his response to legal requirements to try to keep families together is the equivalent of giving those families the middle finger.  And while he’s at it, he makes a not-so-subtle effort to set one oppressed group against another. 

At issue is how much of an effort his agency should have to make to spare children from the chaos of needless placement in foster care, the high risk of abuse in foster care itself and, of course, the occasional allegation of conduct equivalent to torture.  Hunter’s answer: Almost none. This in a state that tears apart families at a rate 30% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.

To understand what’s required we need to go back 46 years. 

In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act.  Among its many excellent provisions is one that requires states to make “active efforts” to keep Native American families together before resorting to foster care.  The term is not defined in the law itself.  There is a definition in federal regulations, but it’s vague, with lots of wiggle room for family police agencies, a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make active efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make active efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make active efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

Two years later, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.  That law applies to all families, but it doesn’t go as far as ICWA.  It requires only “reasonable efforts” to keep families together.  Once again the term is not defined in law, and this time not in regulation either. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make reasonable efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make reasonable efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make reasonable efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

To some extent the entire debate exists only in the realm of the theoretical – because neither law has ever been seriously, systematically enforced. 

We document the failure to make reasonable efforts extensively in this NCCPR Issue Paper.  But I’ll highlight one example: 

A survey of Michigan judges found that 20 percent of the judges said they always concluded that reasonable efforts had been made – in other words, their child welfare agencies were perfect.  Another 70 percent said they rarely concluded otherwise. 

But even more significant: 40 percent of judges admitted that they lied and said the state child welfare agency made “reasonable efforts” in cases where the judges really didn’t believe it.  In half of those cases, the judges admitted they lied because, if they didn’t, the state would not get federal aid for holding the child in foster care, and their counties would have to pick up the extra costs. 

And if that’s the proportion who will admit it on a survey … 

As for “active efforts,” the failure to follow that provision of ICWA can be seen in the extreme racial disproportionality in American child welfare when it comes to states with significant Native American populations.  

In Minnesota, Native children enter foster care at 14 times their rate in the general population.  In South
Dakota Native Children are 12% of the child population – and 57% of the foster child population.  The appalling treatment of Native children by the state’s family police agency was exposed by NPR in 2010, and again by South Dakota Searchlight and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in 2024. 

The extent to which family police agencies have gotten away with ignoring these laws can be seen in the extent to which even proponents of helping families have lowered their standards.  

And that brings us back to Washington State, where, as The Imprint explains,

three years ago, the Washington State Supreme Court Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended draft legislation “to require active efforts for all children” before and after they were removed from home. The commission described active efforts as necessary to ensure social workers take extra steps, and provide services in a “trauma responsive manner.” As an example, they stated that rather than just giving parents a service provider’s phone number, a CPS worker would offer assistance in scheduling appointments necessary to keep the family intact.  

So just to be clear: In Washington State, as far as this Commission is concerned, you can meet the "reasonable efforts" requirement by giving parents a service provider’s phone number!  In other words, you can meet the standard without doing a damn thing for a family. 

Even the Washington State Commission’s definition of "active efforts" is pretty lame.  What if the family doesn’t need an “appointment” for anything? What if they need someone to repair their home so a child isn’t taken because of unsafe housing?  What if they need a voucher to pay for child care so the child isn’t taken due to “lack of supervision”?  And if they really do need an appointment what good is scheduling if they have no car (or don’t have the money to repair their car) and there’s no public transportation? 

"Reasonable efforts," let alone "active efforts" should require the family police to deal with all of this – because that’s what’s most likely to keep children safe and promote their “well-being.” 

But Ross Hunter wants no part of any of it.  His excuse is cost.  He says making "active efforts" on behalf of all children at risk of foster care 

would be very expensive to do, and would require a service array that is much larger than what we have today … [Y]ou have to do it in a way where you’re not requiring something you don’t have the services to provide.” 

No, Ross, you’ve got it backwards. Whether it’s “reasonable efforts” or “active efforts,” these laws require you to do whatever is necessary to create the services and provide them. 

He’s also wrong about the cost.  The great paradox of child welfare is the worse the option the more it costs.  Safe proven alternatives to foster care cost less than foster homes (often, as in the case of rent subsidies and childcare vouchers) a lot less.  The foster homes cost less than group homes which cost less than institutions. 

The reason Washington State hasn’t followed the law requiring "reasonable efforts" or the law requiring "active efforts" is simple.  Contempt for birth families, especially nonwhite birth families, runs so deep in Washington State (and much of the rest of the country) that many people either don’t realize or don’t care that when the family police take a swing at so-called “bad parents” the blow almost always lands on their children. 

But that isn’t even the worst of  Hunter’s behavior on this issue.  There is some nervousness among some – though not all – Native American leaders about what has been called “ICWA for all” legislation.  But it takes a powerful white guy to exploit it. 

Because it sure sounds like Ross Hunter is attempting to play off one oppressed group against another.  As he told The Imprint: 

“Before we will do active efforts for all, I want to make sure that we’re 100% delivering active efforts for the children who have experienced unbelievable historical harm as a result of child welfare practices in the past.” 

That sure sounds like setting the descendants of survivors of genocide against descendants of survivors of slavery – while doing virtually nothing for either. 

And since right now Washington State doesn’t appear to be delivering active efforts for Native families at all – they enter foster care at triple their rate in the state child population -- waiting until they’re  “100% delivering active efforts” for Native families means waiting forever. 

That seems to be just the way Ross Hunter wants it.

Officials in two states that routinely destroy Native American families make their position clear: We don’t care, we don’t have to.

South Dakota tears apart families at a rate well above the national average. Native American children are 13% of the child population and 74% of the foster child population.  But hey, a slogan is a slogan, right?

There were two important news stories last week from states that destroy astounding numbers of Native American families every year.  The stories make one thing clear: State officials and many state lawmakers don’t give a damn about it. 

● Montana continually vies with West Virginia for the title Child Removal Capital of America.  In Montana that’s partly because the state family police agency tears apart so many Native families.  The Montana Free Press reports that Native children are 10% of the state’s child population and one-third of the foster child population.  The Free Press story is filled with such data – and filled with bland, boilerplate, buck-passing responses from state officials like this one from the head of the state family police agency: “I think it’s really about continuing to have the conversation.”  The closest thing she has to a concrete solution is no solution at all – making it easier to place Native children in hidden foster care. 

● It’s even worse in South Dakota, another state that takes away children at a rate well above the national average.  In South Dakota, Native Americans are 13 percent of the child population and nearly three-quarters of the foster-child population, an issue first exposed in 2010 by NPR.  South Dakota Searchlight and the Sioux Falls Argus Leader returned to the subject with an excellent series last year, documenting how the state cuts a swath of destruction through Native families.  Now they’ve followed up with a story about legislative proposals for change.  

One of those proposals is one that most state legislatures would routinely approve, since it delays actually doing anything: creating a task force.  But those who want to see change are having trouble getting the South Dakota Legislature to do even that much. 

More substantive legislation already has been defeated.  Under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, states are supposed to make “active efforts” to keep families together, a higher standard than the “reasonable efforts” required un federal law (but almost universally ignored) for other families.  A bill to require active efforts for all South Dakota children – and to explain exactly what that term means – was defeated yesterday.  

Even the head of a local Court-Appointed Special Advocates program, herself a Native American, favored the bill.  As the Argus-Leader reported: 

For example, if a parent needs to overcome substance abuse, an active effort would be helping that parent with a ride to a treatment class, said Kehala Two Bulls, the executive director of the 7th Circuit Court CASA program. A reasonable effort would be giving that parent a list of treatment programs. 

I would disagree that a list of treatment programs is anywhere near reasonable as an effort – it’s pretty typical of the failure to make reasonable efforts -- but you get the idea.  Getting the parent to the program is a reasonable effort.  Bringing home-based drug treatment to the parent, as Connecticut does in some cases, is an active effort. 

But the head of South Dakota’s family police agency, Matt Althoff said, presumably with a straight face, that they’re already making “active efforts” in the cases of Native American children who, again, make up 74% of the state’s foster care population.

An opponent of the bill said: “How do we put something in into law when everybody is interpreting this differently?”  And here I’d been operating under what is, apparently, the absurd notion that this is why you put things into law in the first place.

NCCPR in Bridge Michigan: Judges can — and must — solve Michigan’s child placement crisis

Amid all the concern over children in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems forced to endure makeshift placements — some even shipped more than a thousand miles away — Michigan has lost sight of the real causes of the problem. As a result, everyone from the state’s probate judges to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services pursue solutions that will make things worse.

At the root of the placement crisis is the fact that Michigan tears apart so many families needlessly. The typical cases seen by DHHS caseworkers are nothing like the horror stories. Far more common are cases in which poverty is confused with neglect. In Michigan, 17 percent of children were thrown into foster care because their parents lacked adequate housing — that’s more than were taken because of physical abuse. … 

Read the full column in Bridge Michigan

NCCPR in Youth Today on a major court ruling in Massachusetts

The court ruling makes clear that the state's highest court is fed up with the way the state's child welfare agency ignores the legal requirement to make "reasonable efforts" to keep families together.

The ruling also provides a rare look at how a child welfare agency really functions. As usual, the picture is ugly.

Read the column here.

Congratulations, Alaska: You’re the foster care capital of America

At the end of 2016, the federal government finally released state-by-state foster care numbers for 2015.

Congratulations, Alaska: You’re number one!

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform uses a “Rate of Removal Index” to determine each state’s propensity to place children in foster care. The index compares the number of children entering care over the course of a year and in care on the last day of the federal fiscal year to the number of impoverished children in each state.

In 2015, Alaska had proportionately more children in foster care than any other state. Have a look.

We believe the fairest comparison factors in rates of child poverty. But when you instead compare the number of children in foster care to the total child population, Alaska still has proportionately more children in foster care than any other state.

As for the number of children taken from their homes over the course of the year, Alaska’s rate of removal is only the third highest in the nation – again, that ranking holds whether comparing to the number of impoverished children in each state or the total child population.

Alaska’s rate of child removal in 2015 was more than triple the national average, and more than quadruple the rate in states that are, relatively speaking, models for keeping children safe.

There is no evidence that Alaska children are three times safer from abuse and neglect than the national average. And check out this dismal trend: Between 2012 and 2015 the number of children taken from their homes over the course of a year in Alaska soared by 65 percent – with most of that increase between 2014 and 2015. Nationwide, there also was an increase during this time of less than 8 percent.

But then, why should anyone expect anything different when the head of the Alaska child welfare agency, the Office of Children’s Services (OCS), confuses child removal with child safety, and almost brags about breaking federal law requiring “reasonable efforts” to keep families together?

I’m sure the OCS will rush to blame the latest “drug plague.” That’s what child welfare agencies always do.  That’s what Arkansas tried to do. That state also had a spike in foster care numbers. So their child welfare agency hired consultants to tell them what they wanted to hear – that it was all because of drugs and budget cuts.

But the consultants didn’t go along. They found the problem was the culture of their child welfare agency and the courts. Imagine what they’d find in Alaska, where the rate of removal is well over double the rate in Arkansas.

You can be sure something else is happening in Alaska as well: Children in real danger, children who really should be removed from their homes, are being overlooked.  Because the more a system is overloaded with false allegations, trivial cases and cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect, the less time caseworkers have to investigate any case properly. So they make more errors in all directions.

Who is Targeted in Alaska

Although the most famous dysfunctional family in Alaska is white, they don’t seem to have been the subject of so much as an investigation (nor should they be). But imagine if that family were Native American. In Alaska, 18 percent of children are Native American or Native Alaskan. They represent 42 percent of foster children. But then, in a state where the “reasonable efforts” requirement is treated as a joke, it should come as no surprise that the Indian Child Welfare Act is ignored.

You can’t blame all this on money.

I’m a tax-and-spend liberal, and proud of it. And there is nothing at which I’d rather throw money than child welfare. I’d be glad to see all states spend more. But Alaska’s already spending a lot.  As of 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, Alaska was spending on child welfare at the third highest rate in the country, well over double the national average.

Even when you factor in the cost of living and vast travel distances in Alaska, it’s hard to make a case that the problem is lack of money.

The real problem is the great paradox of child welfare: The worse the option, the more it costs. Safe, proven alternatives to foster homes cost less than foster homes, which cost less than group homes, which cost less than institutions. So Alaska winds up spending on child welfare at one of the highest rates in the country — and getting dismal results.

Foster care in Michigan: What they won’t be talking about in federal court Monday

Sometime tomorrow (Monday), according to one news account, there may be an announcement about a new modified consent decree between the Michigan Department of Human Services and the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights. If it happens, it’s likely to be a pretty disgusting spectacle.

On one side: the director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, Maura Corrigan will be there.  In her previous job on the Michigan Supreme Court, she turned the court’s website into a propaganda organ for adoption as the only form of permanence.  While serving on one of those pointless Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commissions she walked out during the one part of one session in which birth parents told their stories.

On the other side: someone from the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights.  Since they, too, view permanence almost exclusively in terms of adoption, and they don’t care about keeping families together either, there’s not much to argue about, is there?

So here’s a reminder of what neither side will be talking about.  It was written in response to a request for statements of support by organizers of a Speak Out in support of Maryanne Godboldo, whose children was taken needlessly after Godboldo, in consultation with the child’s doctor, took her off psychiatric mediation.

            I am sorry I cannot be with you in person; I am honored to be with you in spirit.

            Maryanne Godboldo has been doing what the overwhelming majority of parents – that giant majority who do not abuse or neglect their children - do in one way or another, for as long as they are parents: She is fighting for her child.

            Maryanne Godboldo did not volunteer for this fight.  You might say she was drafted.  But in fighting with such determination and courage for her own child, she has become a leader in a fight for thousands of children all over America needlessly torn by child protective services agencies from everyone they know and love.

            Just last week, we learned about Prince and Charlomane Leonard in Houston.  When Prince Leonard could not get full-time work as a welder, there was no housing he could afford where the family could live safely.  So they moved to a gated community – the storage shed they had rented for some of their belongings.  Prince Leonard built shelves and a loft, installed heating and air conditioning.  The children were happy and healthy.  Then the helping hand of child protective services struck.  They offered no help of any kind, they just took away the children on the spot.

            How common is that?  Three major studies have found that 30 percent of America’s foster children could be home right now if their parents just had decent housing.

            But what about Michigan?

            ●Michigan is a state so backward, that a former District Attorney in Oakland County tore apart a family and tried to jail the parents on charges of sexual abuse based on something called “facilitated communication” – essentially a glorified Ouija board.

            ●Michigan is a state where a study of case records found that when a white family is asked about drug use and says there is none, the case record would say “no history of drug abuse.”  When the same question produces the same answer in a black family, the file would  say “denies history of drug abuse.”

            ●Michigan is a state where millions of dollars are paid to agencies that are supposed to provide in-home help to families. Some of the agencies keep the money, and then refuse to go into Black neighborhoods.

            ●Michigan is a state where, if a family makes the mistake of calling DHS because they don’t have heat in the winter, all they’re likely to get is a cold house with a child abuse investigator at the door.

            ● Michigan is the state where, in an anonymous survey, 40 percent of juvenile court  judges admitted they lied about one of their most fundamental responsibilities.  Under federal law, states are required to make “reasonable efforts” to keep families together and avoid placing children in foster care.  A judge – a real, live, judge – is supposed to certify either that reasonable efforts were made, or that there was no way to do it safely.  If they don’t at least check one of those boxes on a form, foster care in that case is not eligible for federal funds.

            In that survey I mentioned, 40 percent of the judges admitted that they lied, and said reasonable efforts had been made when they didn’t really believe it themselves.

            ●Michigan is a state where, as is discussed in our first report on Michigan child welfare, on page 52, if one parent – even a non-custodial parent - “admits” maltreatment, the other parent is denied a trial, forced to do whatever DHS wants her or him do and may lose the child forever; all without a court ever determining if that parent ever did anything wrong.

            A challenge to that law is heading for the Michigan Supreme Court.  A lawyer for the father – a father who didn’t even have custody of the children - submitted a brief citing the many times the U.S. Supreme Court and courts in Michigan have written decisions emphasizing that children need to be raised by their own parents, decisions making clear that this bond is sacred, and should be severed only in the most serious cases.  In its brief in reply, Michigan DHS dismissed those noble statements as, and this is a direct quote:  “platitudes.”

            So that’s what Maryanne Godboldo, her daughter, and so many others like them are up against: a child welfare agency, run by a former state supreme court judge, no less – that dismisses some of the most important writing in American jurisprudence as “platitudes.”

RUBBER-STAMP REMOVALS

            But, of course, that’s not all DHS dismisses.  DHS also dismisses notions like due process of law.

            For decades I’ve written about how there are no real checks and balances in child welfare – how anything these agencies want is rubber-stamped.

            I thought it was just a figure of speech.

            But now, thanks to Maryanne Godboldo, her lawyers, and some very good journalists at Channel 7, we know that in Michigan, it’s literally true.  No real live judge signed the order to remove Maryanne’s daughter from her home.  The order was, literally, rubber-stamped.  The same thing happened in the Mike’s Hard Lemonade case.

            And consider this: That DHS bureaucracy doesn’t come cheap.  All those investigators and foster care workers and group homes and institutions and court hearings (not to mention the occasional SWAT team and helicopter) cost a lot of money.  And the whole process takes a lot of time.

            All the time, money and effort wasted doing so much harm to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter is being stolen from some child in real danger who really does need to be taken from her or his home.  So those children are overlooked.  And that’s the real reason for the horror story cases of real abuse that make headlines.

            But you’re not just up against DHS.

THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

            Governors, legislators and DHS directors come and go, but always lurking in the shadows are scores of private agencies paid for every day they hold your children in foster care.  To use the late columnist Jack Newfield’s phrase, they are the “permanent government” of Michigan child welfare.  They are the ones who stand most strongly opposed to doing anything to keep families together.  They are the ones who oppose programs to keep Black children in their own communities.

            In 2006, the head of a trade association for private agencies told the Michigan Legislature that impoverished black children are better off far away with total strangers than close by with their own kin, because the strangers, he said, live in better neighborhoods with better schools. (See our first Michigan report, page 61).

            Now consider all the money that was wasted just on institutionalizing Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter.  That money could have gone to rent subsidies, so families aren’t destroyed because they can’t afford housing, or day care, so children are not taken on “lack of supervision” charges.

            But you’re not just up against the private agencies, either.

            Tomorrow, there is going to be another kind of court hearing.  According to one news account, the hearing will discuss a plan to revise the consent decree between DHS and a group of lawyers who operate under the Orwellian name “Children’s Rights.”

            The people at CR, as I call them, are good people.  They really think they are helping children.  But they’re not helping children in Michigan.

            I say the group’s name is “Orwellian” because I don’t know many children who crave the “right” to be torn from everyone they know and love.  But CR has done nothing to pressure Michigan to do more to keep families together.  In fact, CR’s settlement with DHS has made things worse.

            The Michigan settlement has sent DHS on a hiring binge, hiring more child abuse investigators and foster care workers – paid for, in part, by cutting programs to help keep families together.

Few children are demanding the “right” to be taken from grandma and grandpa  because those grandparents can’t comply with ten single-spaced pages of hypertechnical licensing requirements – requirements so absurd that the apartment in Hawaii where President Obama was raised by his grandmother would not have qualified.

            As a result, more than a thousand children have been expelled from the homes of grandparents and other relatives across Michigan.

            Yet CR won’t even say who invited them to Michigan in the first place.

And of course CR stands silent in the face of everything that has been done to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter, refusing to stand up for her children’s rights.

            So I hope that you will take your protests to the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights as well.  Send them polite, civil e-mails (don’t let them divert attention from what they’ve done to how you’re complaining about it).  Tell them you want to know who invited them into Michigan in the first place.  Tell them to speak out against what is being done to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter and all the children like her. And tell them to either fix their consent decree to address wrongful removal – or get out of Michigan.

           

            And there is one more thing I will ask of you.

            After Maryanne Godboldo and her daughter win this fight – and they will – don’t stop fighting.  Please keep up the fight for all the other children like them.  Or, as Joe Hill said nearly a century ago: Don’t grieve. Organize.

            Other cities have grassroots organizations of families fighting to reform their child welfare systems. You know some of them, in Philadelphia, in Los Angeles and in New York.  Detroit doesn’t have one – yet.  You can become that organization.  Those other organizations, and NCCPR, stand ready to help.  

            Thank you for your courage, thank you for your determination.

Foster care in Michigan: Rubber-stamp removals – literally

For years I and other critics of child protective services agencies have complained that there is no real review of CPS actions.  Everything these agencies want is simply rubber-stamped.

What I didn't know is that in Michigan they take that literally.

In a stunning story last week, Detroit television station WXYZ, which has led the state’s news media in covering child welfare, revealed that in two high-profile cases of wrongful removal the so-called “court orders” authorizing the Michigan Department of Human Services and law enforcement to remove the children were not signed by a real live judge.  They were, literally, rubber-stamped.

One of the cases is the case of Maryanne Godboldo, whose child was torn from her when she exercised her legal right, in consultation with the child’s doctor, and took the child of psychiatric medication after it was clear the child was being harmed by the side effects. (Details are in these previous posts.)

The other case is the so-called “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” case, in which a child was thrown into foster care because his father accidentally bought him the aforementioned lemonade at a baseball game.

Here’s what ACLU of Michigan Legal Director Michael Steinberg, who is suing the state on behalf of the family, told WXYZ:

The practice as we understand it, and as we understand happened in this case, is a caseworker rubber stamps a judge’s signature on these orders, and that to us is another indication that it’s a system gone awry, and there’s not enough checks and balances.

It also calls further into question the claims of DHS Director Maura Corrigan in a May op ed in the Detroit Free Press – the one where she said that “Contrary to popular belief, our Child Protective Services caseworkers do not decide on their own to remove children from their homes."

WXYZ found other irregularities in the “order” issued in the Godboldo case, all of which are detailed in their excellent story.  According to the story:

[Godboldo’s attorney] points out that the caseworker claims on the order that Godboldo had “numerous” referrals in the last year to CPS for “medical neglect” – Godboldo’s attorneys know of only one.

And then there’s this:

It appears the caseworker checked contradicting boxes on the order – stating both that reasonable efforts to “prevent removal of the child from the home were not made” and that they were made. So which is it?

Here’s why that is so significant: Aside from the fact that making “reasonable efforts” whenever it is safe to do so is far and away the best option for the child, it’s also required under federal law.  A real, live judge has to certify either that reasonable efforts were made or could not be made safely.  If a real live judge doesn’t do that, the case is not eligible for federal aid.

And that raises an intriguing question: How many other cases are there where the reasonable efforts certification was rubber-stamped by someone other than a judge?  And does that constitute defrauding the federal government?

Sadly, even when a judge does sign the order, it may not mean much. As we first noted in our report on Michigan child welfare (See page 33), in an anonymous survey of Michigan judges, conducted by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and a Maine think tank for this study, 40 percent of the judges admitted that they lied, and checked the box saying reasonable efforts had been made, even when they didn’t believe that themselves.  Half of those judges said they lied because they didn’t want to lose the federal funding.