State might create jobs to meet new welfare rules

01/25/2007

But Pawlenty's plan wouldn't pay workers


BY MARTIGA LOHN
Associated Press


More than 2,400 hard-to-employ welfare recipients could find themselves in taxpayer-subsidized positions, pushing paper in nonprofit offices or serving snacks in after-school programs as Minnesota tries to meet tougher federal welfare-to-work rules.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget earmarks $3.2 million over the next two years to create positions for welfare recipients who haven't been able to hold jobs.

The subsidized jobs are part of a plan that includes accounting shifts and stricter penalties for those who won't work. The state aims to get half the parents on the Minnesota Family Investment Program working 30 hours a week, 20 hours if they have young children.

If they don't, Minnesota could lose $13.5 million in federal funding tied to this year's numbers.

"People who aren't active or only doing a few hours of activity in a given week — that's not meeting the new standard," said Chuck Johnson, assistant commissioner of children and family services at the Department of Human Services.

Counties and tribes would compete for state grants to create short-term positions designed to build job skills and resumes. The ultimate goal would be to help welfare recipients land jobs on the open market.

Almost all the positions would be unpaid — which drew howls of protest from advocates.

"To us, it's slave labor," said Linden Gawboy of the Welfare Rights Committee, a Minneapolis group that frequently pickets the Capitol for more generous welfare benefits. "If there's a job to be done, make it into a real job and then we won't have to be on welfare."

States are under pressure to get more welfare recipients working since the federal government tightened its rules in October and stopped giving states credit for reduced welfare-to-work caseloads going back to 1996.

Subsidized work placements don't help welfare recipients get better private-sector jobs unless they come with child care, job counseling and other support, said Jack Tweedie, a welfare expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Tweedie said Washington state has a successful transitional job program, but it's expensive. Other programs haven't worked as well.

"They're just as likely to get a job after being in some training program," he said.

All Minnesota welfare recipients get child care, work counseling and job-search support.

Tweedie said an early analysis anticipated states would create lots of subsidized positions to get welfare recipients working. But most states have found that strategy to be too costly to implement widely. Instead, more states are using accounting shifts and sanctions to boost their work participation numbers, he said.

Under the new rules, just a third of Minnesota's caseload is working — about 4,400 of the 14,300 families enrolled in the Minnesota Family Investment Program.

Removing 3,200 marginally employable families from the equation will help, Johnson said. The state would use its own money for those with mental illness, mental retardation or very low IQs, learning disabilities, serious disabilities and illnesses, plus newly arrived refugees and victims of domestic violence. Because no federal money would be used, they wouldn't drag the work numbers down.

Welfare recipients also can expect to have to show more documentation that they're spending their hours in work, training or unpaid jobs as the state beefs up verification procedures.

And those who don't work will have less time before they're kicked off the program. Under the current rules, they stay on the program for six months but get a reduced grant. The new rules would shorten that period to three months.

Still, Johnson said Minnesota probably won't meet the federal goal this year.

DFL Sen. Linda Berglin is pushing an alternative plan. She wants even more subsidized jobs — but insists they should be paid. Her plan also would give bonuses to welfare recipients working low-wage jobs, allowing the state to count them and improve its work-participation numbers.