Amendment Keeps County in Control of Welfare : Reform: Supervisor Flynn calls it ‘a major coup’ after approval by the U.S. Senate. But the provision still faces a committee review.

A provision in the welfare reform bill approved by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday would allow Ventura County to continue to receive welfare funding directly from the federal government and to administer its own social aid programs, officials said.

“This is a major coup for Ventura County,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn, who along with Supervisor Frank Schillo pushed for the amendment to the Senate bill.

The bill calls for sending federal grant money for social services to the states rather than directly to counties. The states would then distribute the money as they wished.

But under the amendment introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Ventura County would be able to bypass this stipulation, Flynn said.

He said the amendment, based on a proposal by Schillo and him, would allow counties with more than 500,000 people to receive welfare grant money directly from the federal government. Those counties would also be able to negotiate directly with the secretary of health and human services to develop their own welfare reform programs.

Flynn and Schillo said the provision would help save money and allow Ventura County to better manage its welfare caseload. They said one of their goals is to reduce the average time a person in the county is on government assistance from 17 months to 12 months.

“We want to prove to the Feds we can make it work,” Flynn said. “We want to be held accountable.”

Flynn and Schillo said the county is combining job training programs and developing a special computer program to make it easier to prepare and place people in private-sector jobs.

The supervisors said the county is working to form partnerships with the business community to more efficiently and effectively match workers and their skills with the right job. And they said the county plans to provide more child-care services for welfare recipients.

“Ventura County is taking the initiative in order to come up with a solution to an age-old problem and do it creatively and sensitively,” Schillo said.

In July, the number of people in the county receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children was 29,808, while those collecting food stamps was 40,709. Both programs would be affected by the Senate bill.

Helen Reburn, deputy director of the county Public Social Services Agency, said the county receives more than $100 million annually in state and federal welfare grant money.

But Reburn said it is too early to say how the county’s welfare programs or funding would be affected by the new legislation because the Senate and the House of Representatives must still hammer out details of the welfare reform package. The compromise bill would then need to be approved by President Clinton.

Reburn, however, said that the Senate’s welfare reform bill was less restrictive than the one crafted by the House earlier this year. In addition to increasing child-care spending to allow parents to work, she said the Senate bill does not cut off aid to teen-age mothers, or restrict extra cash assistance for families that have additional babies as proposed by the House.

“The Senate bill is more humane,” Reburn said.

Meanwhile, Flynn and Schillo said they are confident that the amendment to the Senate bill that retains Ventura County’s control over its welfare spending will remain intact when reviewed by a joint House-Senate committee over the next few weeks.

Flynn said there are a number of criteria that limits the number of counties that would be allowed to develop their own welfare-reform programs, but that Ventura County meets all of them.

“I think it has a great chance of getting through the conference committee,” Flynn said. “But if it doesn’t get there, then we’ll enter into negotiations with the state.”

For now, Flynn said he is pleased that the supervisors were successful in getting the Senate to consider their proposal.

“Can you imagine the U.S. Senate reaching down to local government, picking up an idea and putting it in their bill,” he said. “That doesn’t happen too often.”

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