Board of Supervisors OKs Sweeping Welfare Reform Package

Ventura County government will grow bigger in order to shrink.

Or so goes the plan.

On Tuesday, county supervisors unanimously approved a sweeping welfare reform package, adding 83 positions to the payroll, paving the way for seven new “one-stop” career centers and forging crucial partnerships with other public and private agencies.

State and federal money will pay for most of the new employees and programs.

In approving the county’s plan to institute CalWORKS, the state’s new welfare reform plan, supervisors hope to usher 8,200 welfare families--90% of them headed by single mothers raising 17,000 children--off welfare and into self-sufficiency.

If successful, shorter welfare rolls will someday translate to a smaller bureaucracy, county officials say.

That is where the shrinking comes in.

“Obviously, the ultimate measure of success will be a continuous caseload decline, resulting in the need for fewer staff,” Public Social Services Agency Director Barbara Fitzgerald said.

Sixty-one of the positions are being created in Fitzgerald’s agency, which under new state law will shoulder not only the paperwork-heavy burden of determining eligibility, but the role of helping recipients find the services and training they need to secure and retain jobs.

“If we can help [clients] become successful, which I think we can, and with them putting forth a lot of effort, which I think they will, then we can make Ventura County a much better place to live for everyone, and that’s what this will do,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said.

The new welfare strategy follows the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act. The law imposes strict work and job-training requirements and limits to five years the amount of time welfare clients can collect government cash assistance.

The federal legislation eliminated the nation’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, or AFDC, and replaced it with lump sum payments to states to administer their own programs.

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Ventura County began implementing many of the reforms in January. Others will be phased in over the next two years.

In the package of motions approved by the county Tuesday, supervisors reassigned 182 county employee positions and created 84 new ones, 67 of which will be hired this year.

The new positions are being created not only in the social services agency, but in the Behavioral Health, Probation and Public Health departments, as well as in the auditor’s office and district attorney’s child support office.

State and federal money to implement welfare reform will cover the bulk of the $2.6-million cost in fiscal 1997-98, as well as the $7.4-million price tag in 1998-99.

The net cost to the county will be $123,760 this year and $157,700 next year.

Many of the new employees will work as teams in seven “one-stop” career centers that will be created across the county in leased office space over the next two years.

Each team will serve 1,000 to 1,500 families and establish relationships with businesses, job mentors, community organizations, adult schools and community colleges to help clients find employment.

The county plans to invite contract bids from private firms to handle child-care services for CalWORKS families.

County officials also are hoping to enlist the help of volunteers to fill whatever gaps government cannot: rides to work, help in job hunts, teaching English and math skills and proper grooming.

“The most important part when you get right down to it is the team approach,” Flynn said. “If the team does not work well in each of these centers, then the clients are the ones who will suffer.”

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The county’s CalWORKS implementation plans are spelled out in a 72-page document, covering the collaboration that will be needed between the public and private sectors to make welfare reform successful.

But Michael Saliba, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., said the organization is concerned that the document doesn’t contain enough “exit strategies” to pare down the size of the bureaucracy once welfare recipients get off the dole.

Members support the plans and hope the program is a success, he said.

Fitzgerald said her agency will conduct periodic assessments of the plan, and through the annual budget process reduce the size of the payroll where appropriate.

“With success, we put ourselves out of a job,” Supervisor Kathy Long said. “That would be great.”

But Supervisor Frank Schillo said success or not, he doesn’t buy the idea of the county working its way out of a job.

“The poor are always with us,” he said. “We have to be concerned about continuing this and doing it in a conscientious manner.”