Compromise Workfare Bill Approved by Panel

A bipartisan workfare compromise, intended to get people off the welfare rolls and into jobs, easily won approval from a key legislative committee Tuesday, despite a report suggesting that the program might cost more money than it would save.

On a 7-2 vote, the Assembly Human Services Committee approved the bill--a lengthy and complex proposal that would require 170,000 of the state’s welfare recipients to take jobs, enroll in job training, or attend school, or risk losing all or part of their benefits.

The proposal has been termed the first major overhaul of public aid programs since the Ronald Reagan reforms of the 1970s and has been a top priority of Gov. George Deukmejian since he took office.

The legislation, which now goes to the Ways and Means Committee, would affect welfare parents with children over 6 years of age and provide them with transportation, child care and clothing allowances in an effort to get them jobs.

In approving the measure, which has been endorsed by Democratic legislative leaders, committee members went against the wishes of their chairman, Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland). He has attacked the workfare provisions that would put welfare recipients in public service jobs if they failed to find other employment.

Bates had tried to delay the hearing on the bill for a week, a move that would have made it difficult for the measure to be enacted before Sept. 13, when the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn.

But Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who has endorsed the bill, threatened to call an unscheduled floor session of the Assembly on Tuesday to force a hearing. However, Bates capitulated and held the session as originally scheduled.

“They (the bill’s supporters) have the votes,” Bates conceded in an interview before the hearing. “But I want to see that we end up with a good bill.”

In fact, the committee, in an unusual move, voted to approve the bill even before all of the opposition witnesses testified.

In a written report, Legislative Analyst William G. Hamm questioned Department of Social Services estimates that the program would eventually save taxpayers $136 million a year by cutting welfare rolls. Hamm concluded that the “net savings anticipated by the department . . . may not be realized. It is even possible that the program will result in a net increase, rather than a reduction, in governmental costs.”

But he added, “Even if savings from the new program fail to offset costs, the program may yield benefits to society and to the recipients, which outweigh the additional costs.”

Among those who testified in favor were several women who have been in similar workfare programs that some counties already require for welfare recipients.

Sandra Steen of Oakland said that until she was forced to enroll in a work-training program she had no incentive to do any more with her life than watch television and drink.

“All across the country . . . what I heard was, ‘Come to California. They give you two checks (a month), you sit home and wait on the mailman, and wait for your boyfriend, and that’s all you have to do.”’

Only when county officials took her children away because of her drinking problems and she was threatened with a loss of aid did she change her life, Steen said. She said she now works for a nonprofit job-training program that she credits with helping her learn how to earn her own living.

But Sandra Lowe, a welfare mother with a college degree, complained that San Diego County’s mandatory workfare program did little to help her get a job and prevented her from completing law school. Workfare “is a cruel and inhumane program which does not work,” she said.

But the bill’s authors, including Assemblyman Art Agnos (D-San Francisco), voiced assurances that the statewide program would have more alternatives and would be less punitive than the San Diego project.

Others complained that the bill did not do enough to provide the child care needed for 50,000 children over 6 years of age whose parents would have to choose among a variety of job-related activities or lose their benefits.