Top State Official Outlines Welfare Plan

Breaking a weeks-long silence, the state’s social services director has sketched out a plan for implementing new federal welfare reforms that would pass on to counties major responsibility for overhauling the way California cares for the poor.

Under the proposal she hopes to recommend to Gov. Pete Wilson, Department of Social Services Director Eloise Anderson said the state would set welfare-to-work goals for each county, but would allow counties broad flexibility to craft their own programs for meeting the new requirements.

“I’m very reluctant to have the state dictate to each county how they ought to structure their program,” said Anderson, in her first wide-ranging interview since President Clinton signed the welfare revisions into law last week.

“What I would like to do,” she said, “is structure a program that just says to the counties, ‘I want a couple of things from you . . . and [then] I will get out of the business of telling you how to run your program.’ ”

Anderson said each of the state’s 58 counties should have the freedom to decide how it will meet new federal mandates requiring large numbers of welfare recipients to be moved into the work force over the next five years.

She said counties could take an array of approaches, such as forming alliances with private enterprise or nonprofit groups such as Goodwill Industries, expanding job training programs or creating community service jobs like cleaning public parks or beaches.

“I don’t want to prescribe to the counties because if I prescribe, we’ll never get there,” she said. “The counties won’t own this baby [unless we give them the authority to do so]. . . . I want them to want this to work . . . [or] we’re dead in the water.”

A spokesman for Wilson called Anderson’s suggestions “a good solid idea,” but added that it will be some time before the administration unveils a final plan.

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, the leading Democratic voice in the Legislature, said he feared that the administration may ask counties to assume vast new responsibilities without the corresponding money to handle them.

The Hayward lawmaker said the new welfare reform law has already added to the burdens of states without providing proper funding. “Now we have a similar anxiety that the state could pass the buck without passing the bucks to the counties, and that’s unfair,” he said.

His worries were echoed by John Clemons, an official in the Los Angeles County social services department. He said counties are concerned that as the new law causes recipients to lose benefits, they will move on to general assistance, a county-financed program of last resort aid to the poor.

On Thursday, mindful of the counties’ concerns, Assembly Republicans introduced legislation to make ineligible for county assistance any recipient knocked off the welfare roll.

“It makes no sense to get rid of federal welfare as we know it, without changing county welfare,” said John Nelson, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove).

Meanwhile, Anderson outlined how she expected various portions of the new law to be implemented. She also took a shot at Congress, saying it failed to consider the unique circumstances that big states face.

Despite the impression created in Washington, she predicted that no recipients will lose benefits until after the November election. And, she added, she saw no need for legislative action--at least to change cash assistance programs--until January.

She conceded that California faces a daunting task as it attempts to comply with a mammoth restructuring of welfare that requires specific percentages of recipients to work, establishes a five-year lifetime limitation on benefits, denies certain cash assistance to non-citizens and severely reduces food stamp benefits.

As his first act under the new law, Wilson on Wednesday issued an executive order banning illegal immigrants from certain state-funded services.

But on other provisions of the legislation, his administration has taken a cautious approach, and no decision has been made on whether a special legislative session will be needed this fall.

Anderson predicted that for political reasons, the federal government will also move slowly in providing some of the guidelines states need before they can implement certain parts of the law, particularly a ban on providing food stamps to noncitizens.

She said Clinton seems to be hoping that the November elections will give him a Democratic Congress that would be willing to make changes to soften the impact of the law.

“So I’m not looking for a [federal] regulation to come out of this before November,” she said. “I don’t see them rushing to the drum to do this.”

Sources familiar with the welfare debate, however, said the Wilson administration may act unilaterally if it can find a legal way to do so.

As difficult as it is to implement all the various provisions of the new law, Anderson said California is at a particular disadvantage because its welfare system is administered primarily by counties rather than the state.

“If ours was a state-run system, this might not be so bad,” she said. “[Congress] continues to make policy for state-run systems and we have very different issues than state-run systems.”

She said the new law limits to 15% the amount of government funds that can be used for administering the law. Yet, she said, because California has administrative costs at both the state and county level, it may not be able to comply.

Likewise, the law requires careful tracking of each recipient’s time on welfare. However, in California, Anderson said, there is no statewide computer link allowing one county to easily find out if a recipient received aid in another county, much less how long he or she got the assistance.

Federal penalties also work against California, she said, because of its county-based system. If the state as a whole fails to meet work requirements, she said, it will be penalized and all counties will lose funds, even those who met the requirements.

Anderson said she thought that most counties will be able to meet the new requirements, but that a few are so unprepared they could cause the whole state to be penalized.

She would not name those counties, but she hastened to add that “Los Angeles is in good shape.”

In the last two years, she said, Los Angeles County has dramatically improved its welfare programs to emphasize a new commitment to the work ethic.

With 40% of the state’s welfare caseload, she said the ability of Los Angeles County to move recipients into the work force “gives me hope” that California can meet the new federal work requirements.