L.A. County May Stop Sending Welfare Checks by Mail

In an attempt to combat fraud and an alarming increase in postal theft, Los Angeles County plans to stop sending welfare payments through the mail and instead require recipients to pick up their checks.

The change is envisioned as the first step toward replacing welfare checks with an ATM-style “electronics benefits transfer system” being explored by social service agencies nationwide.

In such a system--which could be years away--recipients would be issued coded plastic cards, allowing them to draw payments from machines designed to pay welfare and other social service benefits such as food stamps.

For now, the Department of Public Social Services is awaiting federal approval to begin a program in which the county’s 300,000 welfare families would obtain their monthly checks at 70 check-cashing outlets that contract with the county.

The proposal, in effect in several other states but never attempted in California, is described as a more efficient delivery system. However, advocates of welfare recipients worry that eliminating mail service would create long delays for recipients and particular hardship for those without transportation or who are disabled.

“This is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of modernizing the delivery of benefits,” said Sandra Semtner, the agency’s finance division chief.

The new system would end the department’s reliance on the Postal Service in an era in which robberies of Los Angeles mail carriers have soared--particularly on the first of the month, when welfare checks are delivered.

Mail delivery is “an archaic way to go,” Semtner said.

In Orange County, food stamps already are distributed through check-cashing outlets, but Social Service Agency Director Larry Leaman said the county has not considered delivering welfare checks the same way. But now that Los Angeles County is trying it, Orange County will be paying attention, Leaman said.

“What L.A. is doing sounds like a good idea to me and I’ve made a note to ask the (director of financial assistance) to look into it,” he said.

Not only could using check-cashing outlets to distribute welfare checks reduce the number of mail thefts, Leaman said, it might also save the county some money.

“When you consider the way the price of postage keeps going up and the fact that clients are entitled to a reissued check if they certify they never got one, and then what it costs to stop payment, I can believe it would be more cost effective,” Leaman said.

The new check distribution program in Los Angeles County could start this summer with approval of county supervisors and the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees the distribution of welfare money to families under the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program.

Numerous other governmental agencies have moved away from the mail as a means to deliver welfare payments. In New York and Chicago, where postal robberies are far less frequent than in Los Angeles, welfare payments are distributed at independent outlets.

Under the Los Angeles program, families receiving payments would be required to pick up their checks at one of 70 check-cashing outlets. The outlets would also be responsible for issuing food stamps and checks to about 90,000 individuals on general relief. About 80% of all families receiving welfare now make monthly trips to 44 of these outlets to pick up food stamps.

To smooth service, check-cashing agencies under contract with the county would be required to add more clerks on the first of the month, and recipients would pick up their checks at assigned times during the first 10 days of the month. Recipients would also have the convenience of picking up their food stamps at the same time as their welfare checks.

However, a coalition of community and business leaders is denouncing the plan, saying that it would make life harder on recipients and give an unfair business advantage to check-cashing companies under contract with the county.

Times staff writer Lisa Richardson contributed to this story.