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 They're shifting around existing accounts so their most vulnerable residents don't have to meet work requirements. In the process they're making it easier for themselves to meet the federal government's threshold for welfare and work, and avoiding fines.
The funding shuffle has been lauded by some as protecting those who need more help before they can hold down jobs
-- help such as treatment, counseling or English classes.
But others say the state help contradicts the prime goal of welfare reform: moving people quickly to the workforce.
Minnesota's programs starts in February, and New Mexico and Vermont are also pursuing such programs. In Massachusetts, several lawmakers are pushing bills to start one.
Advocates and officials in those states say the get-a-job approach just doesn't work for everyone: Minnesota's plan would exempt victims of domestic violence, parents caring for children with serious behavioral problems, newly arrived immigrants and those with low IQs and learning disabilities.
Getting those people help will give them a better shot at staying employed someday, they say.
"People who are in that boat -- who don't just go out and get a job on their own
-- are the people who we really need to help the most," said Katie Falls, deputy secretary of the New Mexico Human Services Department.
One expert warned that states could end up backsliding on welfare.
"To the degree that they recreate pre-reform welfare, they are going to have all the problems that pre-reform welfare caused," said Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "The multigenerational welfare, the loss of work ethic, the increased crime, all the problems that went with welfare."
Even though the program uses only state money, the manager of Minnesota's welfare programs acknowledged that the state might get "pushback" from federal authorities. But it's going ahead anyway with what it calls the "Family Stabilization Services" program for about 6,200 families, or about 16 percent of its people on welfare. A parent with one child would get $437 a month plus $248 on a food card
-- the same she would get on the regular welfare program.
"It's not really their business that we're doing this," said Chuck Johnson, an assistant commissioner with the state Department of Human Services. The program costs $18.5 million annually.
Tara Wall, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, wouldn't comment on the states' strategy or make anyone available for an interview.
States have a financial incentive to take tough-to-employ clients off federal funding
-- once removed, they don't drag down the state's performance on work goals tied to potential federal penalties.
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 New Mexico is developing a program similar to Minnesota's, while Vermont is using the option for college students, parents of young children and a small number of hardship cases.
Congress overhauled welfare in 1996, establishing a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits for families and penalties for states that didn't get enough clients to work. States were given more freedom to design their own welfare programs. The number of cash welfare recipients has plunged about 60 percent since then, to less than 2 million families.
As welfare caseloads shrunk, those who could work left the system, leaving states with a greater share of people who were unable to work.
The law was tightened again last year, when most states were already having trouble getting their required half of their welfare clients working an average of 30 hours a week as required.
Two-parent families are expected to meet a higher standard. Falling short of the goals could cost states as much as 5 percent of their annual welfare grant
-- millions of dollars.
State welfare officials have a different vision for some of their clients.
"People who have such serious barriers _ their goal should not be to get a job," said Falls, in New Mexico. "It should be addressing those barriers and getting skills."
Megan Johnson, of St. Paul, might be such a candidate.
She is 23, with a 1-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter and less than a year to go before reaching the five-year limit on welfare. During her school years, Johnson needed special education classes for reading and math. Now, her part-time job as a dietary aide at a nursing home doesn't give her enough hours to get off welfare
-- or even to satisfy the federal rule.
"It's so hard," Johnson said. "I'm trying my best to get off of this, but it's hard. My daughter, she just talks to me and just tells me, `Mom, it's going to be OK.'"
Not all states are sold on starting their own programs outside of the federal umbrella.
Washington state authorities are considering it, but still have questions about whether it could jeopardize food stamps or other federal benefits for clients, said Carole Holland, an administrator with the WorkFirst welfare program.
One welfare expert, Jack Tweedie at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said he expects more states to carve out their own programs for some populations, both to help them meet the federal work threshold and pursue their own policy goals.
"What we're essentially talking about is states using their own money
-- not part of any federal program -- to provide assistance," Tweedie said. "And the federal government can't regulate that."
[Associated
Press] |
