State Welfare Official Touts Wilson Policy : Government: Agency chief Sandra Smoley supports governor’s hard line on fraud and lauds O.C. probe of recipients.

On the day Gov. Pete Wilson formally announced his candidacy for president, state Health and Welfare Secretary Sandra Smoley visited Orange County to tout Wilson’s hard line on welfare fraud and trumpet the state’s random investigations of a group of welfare recipients.

“Welfare fraud represents a loss of at least $750 million each year to California taxpayers,” Smoley said at a news conference. “We cannot and will not tolerate this outrageous abuse of a system that is intended to help the truly needy and not the truly greedy.”

Smoley lauded Orange County district attorney’s investigators who have been conducting random probes of 450 welfare recipients as part of a state-sponsored study. The $1.2-million study, results of which will not be available until February, 1996, is meant to determine the extent of fraud in the welfare population.

Civil libertarians have decried the study, which involves interviews with recipients’ friends, neighbors and children, as embarrassing intrusions into the lives of people who have done nothing but ask for public assistance.

Smoley brushed aside those concerns. Reading from a welfare application, she said recipients are warned that the information they give the county may be checked out.

“This Orange County investigation into the broader welfare population is no different than everybody having to go through a metal detector at airports or the Internal Revenue Service conducting random audits of all American taxpayers,” she said.

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Smoley said that investigators do not set out to embarrass welfare recipients and are discrete. But regardless of the potential discomfort, she said, the instances of fraud that investigators catch show that the study is worth the effort.

Wayne Field, who manages the district attorney’s welfare fraud unit, cited the case of a woman who had been working four different jobs since 1990 and, by using a bogus Social Security number, had managed to receive $55,000 more than she was entitled to.

“She’s been arrested and arraignment is pending in September,” Field said.

The Wilson Administration’s stand on welfare fraud has taken the form of additional money for fraud investigator positions statewide and support for studies in Orange and Fresno counties that center on cases where only the children receive aid. Also, state officials are planning to expand to other counties a pilot project in which Los Angeles welfare recipients are fingerprinted, Smoley said.

Wilson also plans to resubmit “one-strike” legislation that would cut off welfare benefits to anyone caught committing fraud--whether by earning $20 or $2,000 more than regulations allow--a proposal the Assembly rejected during the budget session, Smoley said.