Garamendi Urges Overhaul of State Welfare Program

Drawing from his campaign experience of working alongside ordinary Californians, Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Garamendi on Thursday proposed an overhaul of the state’s welfare program, which he said perversely rewards failure rather than success.

“Our first priority must be to continually emphasize the basic value of work,” said Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in the June 7 primary.

Garamendi cited an example of a mother of two he met while working with her in a nursing home in Woodland, just north of Sacramento.

“I’m going to quit,” the woman told him, Garamendi recalled during an address to corporate public affairs officials at the Downtown Hilton Hotel. “Why should I stay at work when I can go on welfare?” the woman asked Garamendi.

Garamendi said the woman earned $540 a month and had to spend $150 of that for health insurance. On welfare, she would get free health care along with other benefits such as community college fees and child care, in addition to a monthly payment of $607 and food stamps worth $203.

“We are providing even more incentives to get on welfare,” Garamendi said. “We’re going at it backward. . . . We must change the way we think about welfare.”

Garamendi said welfare reform should follow these guidelines:

* Expansion of job training by private business, nonprofit groups and public agencies.

* Creation of local community-service job programs to provide work for those who cannot find private jobs. The money is available, Garamendi said, because “we are spending more than $1 billion a year for perfectly able-bodied people to sit at home.” The state’s welfare bill is about $3 billion.

* Work must always pay more than welfare. “A system will never succeed if families are penalized for working.”

* All Californians should have access to health care so that workers are not enticed into welfare by the free medical benefits.

Most of the proposals were general in nature and Garamendi did not offer details on how they would be financed. Also, many of Garamendi’s ideas have been proposed by others and some are state law. Welfare reform has been a major goal of California governors since 1967, when former Gov. Ronald Reagan took office.

One of the most significant changes in the program has been Greater Avenues for Independence, which provides education and job training to equip welfare recipients for the work force.

The program has been highly praised since its inception in 1985, and now is mandatory for adult welfare recipients. Still, only about 175,000 have participated at any one time out of a caseload of about 2 million, largely because of a lack of money.

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who is seeking reelection this year, failed in an attempt to reform welfare through a state ballot measure in 1992. He introduced a similar plan in the Legislature last year, but it also lost because Democrats opposed the benefits cutbacks the governor wanted.

In 1993 budget negotiations, Wilson and Democrats controlling the Legislature negotiated reforms that would encourage recipients to obtain and hold jobs by keeping more of the income. Other provisions provided incentives to teen-age parents for completing high school, increased child care so that mothers can attend school or work and pumped more money into the program.

Garamendi said Thursday that, with limited exceptions, teen-age parents should get welfare only if they are married. He also proposed tougher enforcement of laws designed to extract child support payments from “deadbeat dads.”

Garamendi praised the program as it is administered in Riverside County, where officials put heavy emphasis on job hunting. Recipients who failed to maintain program attendance had their payments cut.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, Garamendi’s major competitor for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in June, so far has not issued any detailed proposal on welfare.