Welfare Plan Approved, but Not Funding

County supervisors on Tuesday approved reforms for welfare recipients beginning Jan. 1 but failed to get enough votes to accept the $8 million in state and federal money to fund them.

The welfare reform plan got the three votes it needed from the five-member board so the county could fulfill a state-imposed Jan. 10 deadline for adopting the program.

But it took a four-fifths vote to approve the allocation of funds for the plan and Supervisors Jim Silva and Todd Spitzer voted against the funding. Both insist that welfare recipients work at least 32 hours a week instead of 26-hour workweeks allowed in the first year of the county plan. Spitzer pointed out that other urban counties have adopted a 32-hour limit, something local welfare officials also supported.

The county’s plan “is not in keeping with the governor’s proposal,” Spitzer said, referring to more stringent changes pushed by Gov. Pete Wilson. “We need to send a message that Orange County is conservative and that it expects people to work.”

An agitated Supervisor Charles V. Smith said the county decided the policy issues for welfare reform in November.

“You’re threatening to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said.

No other county has approved a welfare-reform plan while failing to adopt a budget for how the money--all from state and federal funds--will be spent, said Gordon Scott, an official with the state Department of Social Services.

Failure to do so means the county would be out of compliance with state law and could face fines; without the outside money, the county could be forced to fund welfare payments itself.

“One of the elements of a plan is a budget,” Scott said. “We just haven’t run into this before. There is no Plan B.”

Board Chairman William G. Steiner scheduled another public hearing on the issue for Jan. 6, the same day Silva will be sworn in as the new board chairman.

“The new chairman will be able to conduct that meeting,” said a clearly miffed Steiner, who chided his colleagues for jeopardizing not only the county’s welfare plan but funding for the poor.

Later in the meeting, the board revisited the issue. Steiner attempted to end the stalemate by voting to join Silva and Spitzer on the 32-hour workweek. But this time, Smith and Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson refused to budge, saying the county should hold a new public hearing before reneging on the 26-hour policy. So the issue remained in limbo.

The 26-hour workweek was the main reason Silva and Spitzer opposed the county’s plan, but there were other requirements they wanted: that mothers return to work the minimum 12 weeks after the birth of a child--rather than the one year allowed by the state--unless there is a medical reason; that welfare-to-work payments end after 16 months instead of stretching up to 60 months; that the county refuse to spend about $15,000 on “ice cream socials,” plaques and other awards for welfare recipients.

Silva said he also couldn’t support 12 new social workers being hired when the agency has 34 current vacancies.

Scott said the state will require all welfare recipients to work 32 hours a week beginning Jan. 1, 1999. Counties are being allowed to phase in the work requirement for the first year, choosing between 20 hours a week to the full 32-hour plan. Most of the first-year funding will pay for child-care services for welfare job-seekers.

Shelley Riddle, a welfare recipient with three children who attends Irvine Valley College, said the board would be wrong to change the work requirement. Riddle, who spoke emotionally on the issue at November’s board meeting, said starting with the 32-hour workweek would “set the recipients up for failure.

“Someone who has never worked before doesn’t know how to organize her life, and [someone who] doesn’t have child care is not going to be able to jump immediately into 32 hours,” said Riddle, of Tustin. “They need to have a transition. It may sound good on paper to be tough on welfare, but it doesn’t help recipients succeed.”

Spitzer acknowledged Tuesday that another public hearing on the issue will bring scores of folks who rely on welfare back to plead anew with supervisors.

“They’re going to use the public hearing as leverage to get us to change our votes,” he said. “But if they had 100 people there, there’d be 100,000 people who pay taxes that support those people. Why should we be abdicating to the welfare recipient? We should be listening to the taxpayers.”