Wife Runs State Employment Program : Massachusetts Welfare Chief Big on Work Ethic

Chuck Atkins holds a master’s degree in physics from Yale, studied defense policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served as a Pentagon “whiz kid” back in the ‘60s.

It’s a resume that seems wildly irrelevant to the job he holds. Atkins is the man who runs the Massachusetts welfare program, one he helped devise by mixing work ethic with public assistance.

What’s more, he confesses that back in 1977, when he was director of the city of Boston’s job training programs, he considered it a waste of time to train people on welfare because, like many others, he believed they didn’t want to work.

‘A Lot of Stigma’

“People tended to believe that the only types of jobs that they could hold down were service or clerical jobs,” Atkins said. “There was a lot of stigma attached to being on welfare. I was as guilty as anyone else of it when there were attempts to get job training agencies across the state to train welfare recipients.”

But, as Atkins likes to say, “the shoe kind of got put on the other foot” in 1978 when he was recruited from the city government’s training agency to join the state government as undersecretary of human services during the last six months of the Democratic administration of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

“Now I had a different incentive,” he said. “I had an incentive to help people get off welfare. And I knew what constraints that we would face from the job training agencies, having been responsible for running $60-million worth in Boston.”

Atkins began putting together a training program, but a month after he was appointed, Dukakis lost the primary election in his bid for a second term. Atkins’ plan never got off the ground. He went to work at Arthur D. Little, a management consultant firm in Cambridge.

Four years later, in 1983, when Dukakis won the governorship back, Atkins picked up where he had left off. This time he was teamed with his second wife, Kristin Demong, whom he had met when they both worked at Harvard University.

Turned Down Larger Salary

Atkins turned down a job that would have paid twice as much as his $70,000 salary as commissioner of welfare, running the state’s largest agency with a $2-billion yearly budget, 5,000 employees, 61 branch offices and more than 500,000 clients receiving assistance ranging from welfare to food stamps to Medicaid.

“I viewed it as a very big challenge,” he said. “Half of my career has been in the private sector and about half in the public sector. And while I’ve had some very interesting jobs in the private sector, the challenge of government is that, at 42, I would probably not be able to run a $2-billion company in the private sector.”

Demong was appointed director of the Division of Employment Security, the state’s second-largest agency with an annual budget of $500 million.

Dukakis wanted to make sure that the two departments worked well together because Demong’s division received 125,000 requests a year for jobs. They had not coordinated their efforts in the past, Atkins said.

Had to Change Attitudes

“If the program were going to work, we had to change the attitude of our employees,” Atkins said. “I had to make them think that their job was not just to hand out welfare checks. It was to help people get jobs. She (Demong) had to get her staff to understand that top priority was to help welfare recipients get a job, a group they hadn’t wanted to deal with before.”

Atkins wants to destroy some “myths” about welfare, such as:

- People are on welfare for generations. “The average family in Massachusetts is on welfare for only two years.”

- They’re all minorities. “Two-thirds of the people on welfare in Massachusetts happen to be white.”

- They’re uneducated. “Forty-five percent of the adults on welfare in Massachusetts have a high school education.”

Atkins said it wasn’t until he started the employment and training program that “we found that most of the people on welfare would much rather earn a paycheck than get a welfare check.”

$100-Million Savings

State officials say more than 23,000 people have gotten full- and part-time jobs under the program, with a savings of more than $100 million this year alone.

Dukakis, a Democrat seeking a third term this year, went on a national tour some time ago to tout the program as an effective way to shrink welfare rolls.

Atkins said that he has no intention of running for public office himself and that he and his wife will leave government service next year to start their own business to develop retirement care communities.

Atkins and Demong usually put in long hours, but they have what they call the 12-hour rule: “Unless you have advance permission--if you’re giving a speech at night or are going off somewhere with the governor--you have to be back in the house within 12 hours of leaving or the other party has the right to nail the door shut.”

Demong broke the rule once. She arrived at their two-bedroom Beacon Hill town house just as Atkins was driving in the nails.

‘We’re Together’

They do bring work home, but that way “at least we’re together.”

He does the cooking, which he finds relaxing. They don’t discuss business over dinner but talk about other things, the kids (three daughters, ages 14, 15 and 17, by his first marriage), weekends or travel.

Atkins grew up in Teaneck, N.J. His father, who switched from business to state service as a tax attorney for New York, “helped instill in me the notion that while the private sector is important, what’s more important is public service and government,” Atkins said.