Welfare reform revisited

Illinois started down the road to "welfare reform" a year ago, undertaking what was to be a multiyear journey. There will be side excursions as the trip continues this year. Top priority for Edward T. Duffy, director of the Department of Public Aid and the man in the driver's seat, is obtaining $344 million to reduce the backlog of bills owed doctors, hospitals and nursing homes that serve the poor.

Duffy recognizes that the attention to paying medical bills may make welfare reform take a back seat to that and to a tax increase and to education. "We're prepared to accept that this year. I think I need to spend a great deal of my time not only explaining to people but convincing people just what the ramifications are of not financing this program at the level it ought to be financed at," Duffy says. He anticipates plenty of debate and has a simple message for legislators: "If you are going to pass state mandates and entitlement programs, then you have to be willing to finance them at the level used."

But he does not expect the cause of welfare reform to be abandoned. Duffy says he will push for passage of H.B. 2862, a measure put into interim study by agreement last spring. The bill was the controversial companion to the successful 1987 reform measure, Public Act 85-0114 (nee H.B. 2853). H.B. 2862 would:

• Allow immediate income withholding for child support in divorce cases.
• Make it easier for Illinois courts to gain jurisdiction over nonresident parents.
• Require mothers with children between ages 3 and 6 to participate in the Project Chance welfare-to-work program. Those with children over age 6 are already required to participate

Duffy also anticipates debate on a proposal to cap basic grants after a family reaches a certain size, a response to the complaint that welfare families have babies to get higher checks. Duffy says he is unconvinced that that notion is worth a battle certain to spill over to the question of Medicaid funding of abortions.

And Duffy expects new efforts to increase basic welfare grants that have been unchanged for more than three years. Since the last grant hike on January 1, 1985, inflation has reduced what a welfare check will buy. In Illinois grants have historically been measured against the standard of need, an annually recomputed state estimate of the income needed for subsistence. The last increase boosted grants to 54 percent of the standard of need, a percentage that inflation has since reduced to 47.9 percent. Duffy says he personally believes checks should be boosted to, at least, restore inflationary losses since 1985, but without the money to pay them he will not advocate the increase.

Duffy views proposed legislation as a means to stimulate efforts to reach a solution. "Part of the reason I think that you propose drastic or controversial measures is to bring to the floor the willingness to debate and to have input and to ultimately come out of it with something that satisfies [the need]," he says. That happened last year when the General Assistance program in Chicago was restructured to bring it under the Project Chance welfare-to-work umbrella. When the deed was done, advocates for the poor and administration agreed they had a package all could live with.

This year advocates for the poor have their own reform proposals. They take a comprehensive approach with a package dubbed "Work, welfare and families," that does everyting from creating jobs to boosting welfare checks.

The legislation proposed by advocates for the poor is not cheap. Its price tag is $190 million, of which $150 million would go to increase recipients' grant levels. (That would increase grants to 55 percent of the standard of need, 1 percent more than Duffy's "If I had the money" minimum.) Other changes sought by advocates include:

• Increasing from six to 12 months the period during which the state will provide child care and medical insurance benefits to persons leaving welfare rolls for work.
• Providing immediate restoration of benefits when a person leaves welfare for a job and then is laid off, to encourage acceptance of temporary jobs.
• Funding, at $10 million, the Emergency Employment Assistance Program that would offer a 50 percent wage subsidy to those who hire former welfare recipients. Passed in 1985, the program has never been funded.
• Extending from clients included last year to other welfare recipients procedural safeguards that limit the department's ability to withdraw benefits for noncooperation.

Douglas C. Dobmeyer executive director of The Public Welfare Coalition, says he and other advocates hope for a tax increase that will include money for their program. He worries that opponents will play off education and welfare reform. "l think the bottom line is, if it's pitted against education, you can put a lot of money in education reform, but if a kid is hungry. . . he's going to fail."

"You can't educate a hungry child," says Richard Wood, co-convenor of the Coalition for Family Stability. "Generally over the last eight to 10 years at the state level the whole range of supports seriously needed for kids that are low income has not been adequately addressed. What we have in the state of Illinois is the need to take seriously our role and address human need in a holistic fashion."

Dobmeyer and Wood get no argument from Duffy on the difficulties of educating hungry kids. They will certainly get an argument from lawmakers over the cost of raising benefit levels. Duffy, the fiscally responsible director, says, "These aren't happy camper times."□

April 1988 | Illinois Issues | 26