Connell Plunges Into Welfare Reform Issue

Democratic state Controller Kathleen Connell said Monday she plans to unveil a welfare reform task force today in Los Angeles, and in the process drew a rebuke from Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

Connell’s 25-member task force will be charged with exploring the job market for likely employment opportunities for welfare recipients leaving the rolls.

Under new federal legislation, recipients in most cases will lose their benefits after a period of time and will be required to work.

Wilson was none too happy Monday with Connell stepping into what the governor considers his territory. The main task of the controller’s office is to issue state checks, and it has authority over a variety of state financial functions.

Connell said it is also within her jurisdiction as the state’s chief financial officer to join the effort toward welfare reform.

Wilson’s spokesman, Sean Walsh, said the governor “was not aware” that Connell was moving independently to place her stamp on a major piece of welfare reform, one of the biggest issues facing the state in the months ahead.

“We tend to look at this with a jaundiced eye,” Walsh said.

Connell’s announcement, Walsh said, appeared to be an effort of self-promotion, “more publicity than substance.”

Connell conceded she was unsure “the governor even knows” about the task force she has formed. She said her office invited members of his administration from the state Department of Social Services to her announcement event in Los Angeles.

The event will consist of her panel’s first meeting today and a press conference at which she will declare the task force officially launched.

She said its 25 members will include two state legislators, six county supervisors and representatives from business and labor.

Among the task force members are state Sens. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) and Ray Haynes (R-Riverside); Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner.

Their assignment will be to explore the job market for likely employment opportunities for welfare recipients leaving the rolls.

Federal welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton last month set up block grants for states to administer welfare programs that for 60 years have been governed from Washington.

Conditions for receiving the grants include limiting benefits for welfare families to five years and requiring able-bodied recipients to go to work two years from the time they start receiving benefits.

States must find jobs for the able-bodied beginning next year. By 2002, half a state’s caseload must be working or the state faces penalties.

The state Department of Social Services estimates that 1 million California welfare recipients will eventually be dropped from the rolls and be expected to find jobs under the new federal rules.

Connell called welfare reform “the single most important issue facing California in the next few years.”

Ramifications affecting her office include “the impact on the state economy, our tax revenues and our budget depending on how we choose to supplement what’s being done at the federal level.”

But Wilson’s spokesman claimed Connell “has been absent” in executive branch discussions and debate over the state’s economy up to now, including on issues of job creation, Wilson’s proposed 15% tax cut and other “fundamental reforms.”

Connell said finding jobs for welfare recipients was as important as moving them off the rolls, and that no one but she had begun a move in that direction.

“It simply is not reasonable to assume that the market will magically respond to produce the jobs that [the federal law] requires,” she said.

Her task force, she said, has “pragmatic, first-step goals” to put people to work who are not accustomed to holding down a job.

She said that on the panel, for example, are executives from industries likely to become employers of welfare mothers, such as Kaiser Permanente hospitals, Hilton hotels and the food industry.