Senate Panel OKs 4 Plans : S.D. County ‘Workfare’ Program Gets Reprieve

A Senate committee broke a stalemate on reform of the state’s troubled welfare system Wednesday by approving four limited pilot projects.

Under the package, which a Deukmejian Administration spokesman reluctantly conceded would “keep the dialogue open,” San Diego County’s 3-year-old “workfare” experiment would continue.

The other three projects aimed at finding jobs for people on welfare, including an approach Gov. George Deukmejian wanted to implement statewide, would be tested in no more than six counties.

Facing more committee hurdles in the Senate, plus reconciliation with eight welfare reform bills in the Assembly, the package approved Wednesday by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee may have little, if any, resemblance to the reform package that eventually reaches the governor’s desk. Democrats for both the Assembly and the Senate have been holding discussions with the Administration in an attempt to put together a welfare reform package. Deep divisions among Democrats had pushed the committee to a near impasse on welfare reform. But two Republican members of the panel, Sens. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) and Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim), forged the bipartisan compromise that resulted in all four bills passing.

Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Woodland), who is carrying the Administration’s proposal for a mandatory statewide workfare program, did not attend Wednesday’s hearing. Maddy and committee Democrats were about to put off consideration of the Administration’s bill for at least a year, but Royce saved it with an amendment making it an experimental program in three counties.

The committee also voted:

- To continue the San Diego program for two more years, but with modifications, including a “softening” of mandatory sanctions for non-cooperation.

- To test in six counties a proposal by Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) for a mandatory program with more extensive job-search and training efforts for welfare recipients than in Nielsen’s bill, but without a required “community work experience” for clients who do not find paying jobs.

- To test in one county a proposal by Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) that stresses job screening, assessment, training and educational opportunities, but no mandatory work requirement. Watson, chairman of the Senate committee, patterned her bill after an existing program in Massachusetts.

As they had a week earlier, a number of welfare recipients and welfare rights advocates testified at Wednesday’s hearing.

Reacting to stories of hardships and bureaucratic snafus, Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), forced an amendment into the bill on the San Diego program that would restore welfare benefits to any person who loses them for noncompliance once the client decides to cooperate.

Currently, the loss of benefits, once imposed, lasts for three months.

State Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista) accepted Rosenthal’s amendment, he said, because he was impressed by the testimony of Mark Gilliland, an unemployed machinist with a large family, who said San Diego workfare administrators offered him “useless” training on how to dress for interviews and make telephone job inquiries. Gilliland said he would welcome meaningful retraining in another field because machinist’s jobs are scarce.

San Diego County Social Services Department Director Randall Bacon said the change “will make the program more cumbersome, but we can live with it.”