States Await a Free Hand on Gamut of Welfare Plans : Aid: Washington is apparently ready to hand over the reins. Ideas range from job training to deterring births.

When this state’s governor put together his new plan for reforming the welfare system, his approach was simple: Get as many people off the rolls as fast as possible and prevent any new ones from signing up.

But Michigan’s governor, confronting the same task, approached it differently. There, people would not face any time limit on how long they could receive payments, and even teen-age mothers--often cited as the welfare system’s prime offenders--would remain eligible.

Recipients would be coaxed--with job training and placement--rather than dumped into the work force.

These starkly disparate views of how government should deal with poor families receiving public support exist on paper in state capitals across the nation but not yet fully in reality because the more Draconian approaches are being blocked by the federal government.

That may not be the case for much longer.

As Congress and the White House get down to business on overhauling the nation’s welfare system, they are moving toward giving states much more latitude to set their own rules and their own benefits for the poor families receiving aid in their jurisdictions.

With the final outlines awaiting months of grueling legislative struggle, it now appears that states may soon be free to be almost as punitive, or as lenient, to those on the dole as they choose.

The result, based on the pattern of experimental plans now in place in 24 states, could wind up resembling a wildly variegated patchwork of approaches stretching from one coast and one extreme to the other, with lots of novel twists in between.

Apparent already is that for all the shared disgust about welfare as we know it, disagreement abounds on what would work better.

“We will have 50 different state laboratories, encouraging people to work and forcing people to work,” said Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican who is one of the leaders in the national debate on the issue. “The presumption that there’s one size that fits all was wrong. Instead of saving families, we’ve destroyed them.”

So great is the disparity that some officials are already concerned about families migrating from one state to another to take advantage of better benefits. And others are sounding alarms about the prospect of starving children in some areas or chronic freeloading in others.

Only one common denominator seems to have emerged in the states’ plans: the need to abolish the current arrangement of allowing parents to stay at home and collect benefits indefinitely without any brush with the job market.

The states all seek to funnel their welfare recipients toward employment and reward them for getting jobs; but how they do so varies greatly.

One tougher approach assumes that many of those on the dole will never take care of themselves as long as there is a safety net to support them. It advocates virtually removing the net and allowing those families to subsist through new motivation and self-discipline.

That tack is favored by Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice; it has also been praised by Texas Gov. George W. Bush and could well be adopted in some form in a number of Southern states if Washington gives the green light.

An alternative approach assumes that welfare families will never take care of themselves as long as they lack the skills and experience needed in the work force. It advocates an elaborate government-run system for giving them that training and then guiding them into appropriate jobs, showing a lot of patience in the process. This seems to be gaining favor across the Midwest.

Throughout the nation, states are trying variations and combinations of carrots and sticks; and each state is weighing possible benefits and serious pitfalls, with no clear sign yet which will prove greatest.

In conservative, economically strapped Mississippi, the benefits of the hard-line approach seem very appealing--it saves money and may offer more deterrents to out-of-wedlock births and joblessness.

The state’s new plan cuts people off as soon as they refuse a job, caps benefits so mothers on welfare cannot get larger checks if they have more babies and cuts off teen-age mothers unless they live with their parents.

To induce employers to hire welfare recipients, Mississippi offers a subsidy amounting to part of the worker’s welfare payment.

But state officials concede that they will be able to offer almost no job training. And they acknowledge they will probably move to a much sterner system as soon as they gain greater control of their welfare system, as they expect to.

The new plan includes rules making it virtually impossible for anyone to sign up for welfare in the future. These were passed by state lawmakers after less than five minutes of debate last year but have not been submitted for federal approval because they would be rejected.

And Fordice, a Republican, has proposed thinning out the number of existing recipients by dropping anyone who has a baby.

When asked what measures might be too tough to impose on welfare recipients given the current political climate, Greg Phillips, the director of human services for the state, paused for a moment and then said: “I’m not sure there is anything too tough.”

But some in Mississippi are worried that extra motivation may not be enough to save some of those kicked off the rolls. And they worry about the powerful racial images from the past of poor blacks suffering while state government looks aside.

“I would hate to wake up and have the federal guidelines gone,” said state Rep. Frances Fredericks, who represents a district on the Gulf of Mexico. “I fear black people would be cut off of welfare faster, and there would be nothing to take its place. Our history does not show that we’ve been fair on these issues before--not unless the federal government forced us.”

The threat was not lost on some at the welfare office one day recently. “We’re not back in slavery days,” C. Lawyer, a mother of three, said as she waited in line with her toddler to get food stamps. “The governor, what’s his name, Fordice, he ought to get out.”

But the more benevolent approach favored in some other states has its disadvantages as well--chiefly, that it saves little if any money over the current system and it is more prone to continuing abuse, potentially leaving the much-decried “cycle of dependency” unbroken.

“In the near term, we’re going to have to spend more, not less,” acknowledged Gov. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, where one of the less punitive experiments is under way.

Engler’s system in Michigan, already in operation, is serving as a leading model.

It provides extensive skills training, child care and medical benefits to recipients and helps place them in jobs. And it guarantees publicly subsidized jobs indefinitely for those who don’t land employment in the private sector, allowing recipients to keep a portion of their welfare checks as well.

Engler says this approach is a success. Currently a quarter of the 200,000 adults receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children are also working.

Oregon and Colorado have variations on this theme. Oregon puts recipients in government-subsidized jobs for nine months. They can later return to welfare if they don’t find a private-sector job, but many are choosing work, officials insist, and the rolls are shrinking.

Some other states, such as Indiana, while offering plenty of help, insist on a two-year limit on benefits after a recipient receives job training and placement.

While Republicans and moderate Democrats in Washington favor two-year limits, some Republican governors are less eager than Democratic governors to adopt stringent deadlines because they are not enthusiastic about spending more money on job training and placement.

New Jersey and Ohio are still struggling with two elements they consider repugnant: government-provided jobs and a firm time limit, which they fear could let children of cut-off families go hungry.

“What does ‘two years and you’re out’ mean?” asked Mike Dawson, press secretary for Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, a Republican. “You still have people that you have to do something with. This country did not get into this mess overnight, and we’re not going to get out of it overnight.”

But critics warn that without tough rules, a state may merely wind up trading one debilitating system of government dependence for another.

Already, governors planning their own systems are conscious of the stark disparities across state borders and are wondering about the prospect of recipients migrating to get the best deal.

California, for example, would have more generous benefits than other states in the region even if it gradually reduces payments for long-term recipients, as Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed. It offers job training and would not have a firm deadline to get off the dole. But Wilson has failed in his bid to deny benefits to new residents.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Tommy G. Thompson has voiced similar concerns about deterring poor people who are migrating from Chicago.

The new reforms could make the existing gaps in benefits even wider. But perhaps of greater concern in statehouses is how much money the federal government might give the states for welfare if it hands over the freedom to run it.

“Do the states want this? It depends,” said Gary Stangler, director of Missouri’s welfare system. “The devil is in the details. A block grant has to be designed to help us cope with changes in the economy.”

Stangler said that just by cutting federal red tape, he could reduce welfare costs in his state by at least 5%. But if the federal government did not agree to provide more grant money in times of economic difficulty, he said, a new state system could still be swamped with losses.

“You would run a real risk of bankrupting states or forcing them to take money from education or other priorities,” Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh said.

“I’m in favor of maximum flexibility, but I don’t need a shift of costs,” agreed Sue Tuffin, who administers Colorado’s welfare reform program.

It is not yet clear how much more freedom, or how much more money, the states will wind up getting. House Republicans are pushing a plan to give states a lot of flexibility but put time limits on benefits or subsidized jobs. The Clinton Administration is expected to fight the more punitive measures against recipients.

But the resulting system will almost certainly be much different from what the nation has seen for decades.

“We could see the kind of pattern that existed in the 1950s, where there was huge variation in the treatment of the poor,” said Demetra Nightengale, a welfare policy analyst at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.