Panel Shelves Wilson’s Plan on Welfare : Legislature: Assembly committee says it cannot go along with key elements of the governor’s plan to overhaul the system. An effort to reach a compromise is planned.

An Assembly committee shelved Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to overhaul the state’s welfare system Wednesday after Democratic leaders said they could not go along with key elements of his plan, including drastic cuts in benefits.

But Tom Bates (D-Berkeley), chairman of the Assembly Human Services Committee, said Democrats would sit down next week with Republican leaders and officials from the Wilson Administration to see if opposing sides could work out a compromise.

“There are some things in here (the governor’s proposal) that are good but then it has some kickers in it too,” said Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles).

For the first time, the Administration had sent signals that it would be willing to sit down with Democrats and consider a major compromise on trimming welfare, one of the Republican governor’s pet issues.

Last year, the governor adamantly refused to consider serious compromise, saying he expected the voters to approve Proposition 165, an initiative intended to reshape the state’s welfare system and designed to impose a 23% cut in cash benefits on most recipients. That proposal was defeated in November.

The governor’s latest proposal incorporates most of the elements of Proposition 165--including a 19% cut in cash benefits--but also includes some additional proposals that Democrats have found more appealing.

Bates, for example, said he liked the governor’s idea of expanding GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence), the state’s highly praised welfare work program. But he said he could not accept the governor’s plan to force counties to put less emphasis on the education component of GAIN.

The governor, citing studies that show the job search services provided by GAIN get the best results, had proposed limiting the amount of education offered by the program.

Archie-Hudson said the limitations would have prevented most recipients from completing community college programs that she said were needed to qualify them for the kind of jobs that would get them off welfare permanently.