Governor Played Strong Hand in Welfare Redesign

California’s new welfare plan was approved this week by a Democratic-controlled Legislature, but it was Republican Gov. Pete Wilson who left the heaviest imprint on it.

From the beginning Wilson held most of the political advantage, and in the end he was successful in forcing the Democrats to agree to a plan that more closely resembled his vision of a welfare system for California.

It had the strict work requirements he had sought, no provisions for adults to receive aid after they reached a five-year lifetime limit, no state funding of General Assistance, the option for counties to require mothers of newborns to work after 12 weeks, tough restrictions on recipients who tried to get a community college education and no state food stamp program for legal immigrants.

Wilson, not surprisingly, announced Monday that he intends to sign the package into law.

Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who helped design a legislative welfare plan and ultimately voted against the final compromise, said Wilson won concessions from the Democrats by playing on their fears of voter reprisals if they failed to enact a welfare plan quickly.

“We were hurting a lot because time was marching on,” she said. “The budget and the welfare reform policy were supposed to move hand and hand and I think the pressure from the public . . . just led our negotiators to compromise more than I thought they should.”

Privately, Democrats admitted that they wanted desperately to settle the politically sensitive issue of welfare now rather than put it off until next year when most of them would be facing reelection.

For weeks, Wilson kept them off guard by first hinting that he might not be willing to bargain at all and then, just when the Democrats had given up hope, announcing that he would deal if they were willing to make concessions.

Even the new federal welfare law, enacted by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president last August, gave Wilson an advantage by limiting the maneuvering room of his Democratic opponents, particularly the liberal wing of the party.

Democrats, for example, were virtually locked into a five-year lifetime limit on welfare established by the federal law. To go outside that limit, they would have had to establish a new welfare program financed entirely with state money.

To add to their political woes, the Democrats, particularly in the Assembly, were philosophically divided between liberals who wanted to moderate the work requirements in the federal law and moderates in swing districts who feared that they would be vulnerable at election time if they did not back a more conservative plan.

But Democrats did win several important concessions from the governor, particularly his agreement to allow counties to provide community service jobs for recipients who reached initial time limits.

Under the plan, current welfare recipients could receive assistance only for 24 months at a time and new applicants for 18 months. However, when they reached those limits, they could qualify for community service jobs that would allow them to work for their welfare grant until they reached the five-year lifetime limit.

“That was one major element of the package that we were worried about,” said Casey McKeever, directing attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty Inc. “What we got was not ideal, but it was certainly light-years better than what the governor had originally proposed.”

Wilson’s original welfare plan called for current recipients to lose aid entirely after 24 months and new applicants after one year.

For counties, the maneuvering between the governor and legislative leaders produced a plan that one official called “a mixed bag.”

Frank Mecca, executive director of the California County Welfare Directors Assn., counted as pluses in the final compromise the fact that counties would have more flexibility to design their own welfare programs. And, he said, the creation of a diversion program would allow them to provide a one-time grant of aid to families to get them through an emergency and keep them off welfare.

But, he said, a serious disappointment was the failure of the plan to reduce the mountain of paperwork that counties are required to perform.

“With respect to administrative paperwork, we didn’t really end welfare as we knew it,” Mecca said.

In Los Angeles, county officials generally applauded the new plan, saying that its enactment along with recent federal decisions finally gave them a workable blueprint for welfare reform.

“Between the federal and state actions, I think the most egregious part of the welfare reform legislation has been corrected,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky. “We are in a far better position today than we thought a year ago that we’d be in at this point.”

A year ago, county officials openly worried that their large population of legal immigrants would lose almost all their benefits and turn to the county’s General Relief program to make up for some of that lost federal and state money. The program, which pays a maximum $212 a month, comes out of the county budget and pays mostly for those ineligible for other types of assistance.

Ellis reported from Sacramento, Meyer from Los Angeles.