Ken McCall: New welfare plan has caused state to scramble

Friday, Aug. 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

IF STATE WELFARE workers are having nightmares about a 15-mile-long alien mother ship heading their way, they are not alone.

The approaching end of "welfare as we know it" has thousands of folks across the nation scrambling to draw up last-minute war plans.

State Welfare Division Administrator Myla Florence says her staff has shifted into "super-overdrive" to figure out what Congress' recently passed welfare reform will mean to Nevada.

It's not that the state hasn't seen it coming. Gov. Bob Miller, the state Legislature and welfare officials have been watching Washington closely as they worked to reform the state system. Indeed, almost everyone involved will tell you Nevada is already headed in the "work-not-welfare" direction set by Congress.

Still, federal lawmakers had appeared gridlocked on the issue until a last-minute attack of pre-election bad conscience spurred them into action. Now the state has 11 months to design and launch a whole new system.

State officials finally got their hands on the 413-page, nine-chapter bill late last Friday and have been putting in long hours ever since trying to decipher it.

One thing they're sure of: Big changes lie ahead.

The old entitlement to welfare is gone. In its place is a system of federal block grants that shifts the responsibility for design and execution to the states.

But the flexibility that the states have been seeking for years comes with a set of performance standards that amount to a whole new set of regulations.

The legislation, says Mike Willden, Welfare Division deputy administrator, puts a "tremendous emphasis" on forcing welfare recipients to work.

In fiscal year 1997, Willden says, the state must get 25 percent of all "non-exempted" welfare family adults participating in employment or training programs. That bar will then rise by 5 percent every year until it reaches 50 percent participation in the year 2002.

In addition, the adults -- who are almost all single mothers -- will have to work more hours a week to meet the participation standards as time goes on. The bill requires 20 hours of work per week in 1997 and 98, 25 in 1999 and 30 hours thereafter.

Miss the standards, Congress says, and you lose money.

The reform act also requires states, among other things, to step up enforcement of child support payments, restrict welfare for aliens, change the rules for child care funding, and change child nutrition, food stamp and food distribution programs.

In 11 months.

But there are loopholes, and Nevada took a desperate dive through one Monday.

The 43 states that have already received waivers from federal welfare regulations may be exempt until the waivers run out.

Florence admits that interpretation of the law is still being hotly debated, but "to protect ourselves," she says, the state applied for a waiver anyway.

The waiver, which she says is on a "fast-track" for Clinton Administration approval, would give the state more leeway in counting "participants" for the all-important annual totals.

"As you can see," she says after a lengthy and technical explanation of the waiver, "the feds haven't really simplified the rules."

But they have limited the money.

Many experts say welfare reform can't be done on the cheap, but Congress has guaranteed savings by freezing federal funding at its current level.

That has state officials, including Gov. Miller, worried that Congress may be asking the states to do too much with too little.

While Miller is convinced the bill is a step in the right direction, says spokesman Richard Urey, he's also concerned that the block grants "may be on the light side."

Other officials go further, predicting the new rules are going to "stretch" the state system.

The truth is, nobody knows yet. But with all those fingers flying on all those Carson City computers, it won't be long before the bottom line hits the printer.

The bigger question, which may take years to answer, is whether welfare reform will save any money.

"Not in the short term," says Florence with a certainty.

Savings will only come if mothers are able to work themselves off welfare, she says, and that will only happen if the state can provide them the counseling, training and child care support they need to do it.

If they can't, the states are going to wind up holding the bag.

These mothers and their children aren't going to disappear just because the new welfare order doesn't work.