New Welfare Load on Counties

The California Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson have agreed on a welfare reform package that will impose strict work requirements, set justified deadlines including a five-year lifetime limit on welfare, fund child care for parents who go to work and provide community service jobs for those who fail to find jobs in the private sector.

It sounds reasonable, but is it doable? The real test will come as county welfare departments implement the new temporary assistance program and try to put even the most hard-to-employ welfare recipients to work.

Sacramento’s welfare agreement does not address a more immediate crisis for the counties. As of Sept. 1, more than 100,000 legal immigrants in the state, more than one-third of them in Los Angeles County, are scheduled to lose federal food stamps. Democrats want the state to pick up the tab at a cost of $100 million, but Wilson opposes shouldering an expense that rightly belongs to Washington. Given the federal abdication of this responsibility, the state should provide the food stamp assistance to legal immigrants. Then it should again pursue legal means of recovering the money from the federal government.

Current welfare recipients will be able to continue to receive public assistance for up to two years before they must go to work. If, at that time, they cannot find jobs, they will be allowed to work in community service jobs. By July 1999, county welfare departments will need to design these jobs of last resort, on top of all the other new tasks they must assume under the reforms.

New welfare recipients can receive aid for up to 18 months before they are required to go to work. Counties can extend that deadline to 24 months, a flexibility they need because of high unemployment in some areas.

Parents who go to work will need affordable child care. The welfare package is expected to fund this need. New mothers will be allowed to receive aid for six months before they will be obligated to go to work, and counties could extend that period to a year. Although six months is far more generous than the 12-week maternity leave allowed in much of the private sector, this deadline acknowledges the current scarcity of affordable supervision for infants. State welfare officials insist that the infusion of money and the demands of the marketplace will remedy this shortage, though the current scarcity in the face of great demand would seem to say otherwise.

The new state program also will significantly expand treatment for drug abuse and mental health problems; currently, welfare mothers who need help face lengthy and discouraging delays. After treatment, they will be expected to raise their children and go to work. If they fail to overcome addictions or mental problems, they could lose their children. The safety of children should come first, but wholesale removal of children from their parents should not become an unintended consequence of welfare reform.

Welfare reform is long overdue, but it’s also a huge social experiment. The Sacramento deal will shift the challenge to the counties, where thoughtful implementation will be needed to put welfare recipients to work without hurting children.