State eyes tougher rules for welfare
Work requirements would be expanded
About 10,000 additional Massachusetts welfare recipients, including many people with disabilities, would have to work, and thousands who already have jobs would have to labor for longer hours under new rules recommended yesterday by a special state panel.
The proposed changes, which would have to be implemented by October of next year to put Massachusetts in compliance with federal welfare rules, would force as many as 5,600 disabled people to meet work requirements and compel some recipients to work for as many as 34 hours a week, up from the current maximum of 30 hours.
Overall, the recommendations would increase the number of Massachusetts welfare recipients who have to work from roughly 12,700 to about 22,000. A total of 49,000 families are currently on the state's welfare rolls.
John A. Wagner, the commissioner of the state's Department of Transitional Assistance, said the recommendations represent a change in attitude that will help many people with disabilities. The report calls on the state to determine "what the individual person with disabilities [is] capable of doing, with sufficient support, to contribute to their success and that of their children."
"The disabled populations historically have been put aside and exempted and ignored," said Wagner, who was appointed to head the department by Governor Mitt Romney. "What we're saying is that even folks with disabilities, given the appropriate supports, can engage in productive work activities."
But the Welfare Reform Advisory Committee, which was convened by Wagner, also calls for expanding the definition of work so that it includes activities such as caring for a disabled family member, taking English-language classes and, for teenagers, going to high school. The current definition already includes some classes and job training, as well as some substance-abuse treatment and searches for jobs and housing. The report also calls for a restoration of welfare benefits for legal immigrants.
Released just days after Romney and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini said they want to overhaul health insurance to reduce costs and cover more people, the welfare report puts another hot-button social issue in the laps of Beacon Hill policymakers. One leading liberal lawmaker, reflecting the opposition to the proposal, is expected to file legislation that would maintain many of the current exemptions from the work requirement.
A spokeswoman for Romney declined to comment on the substance of the report, other than to commend the committee for its work.
Wagner created the committee in July to prepare for the new federal requirements, tapping advocates, government officials, educators, and people with expertise in fields relevant to welfare recipients, such as disabilities, immigration and refugee issues, substance abuse, and mental health.
Jeffery J. Hayward, a vice president of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the cochairman of the panel, said his goal was to "soften the edge of what could potentially happen to some of these welfare recipients" as Massachusetts moves to meet the stiffer federal standards.
"We think it's very reasonable," Hayward said. "Our biggest win, from an advocates' standpoint, is an expansion of what counts as work."
Some critics, however, say the stiffened work requirements are Draconian. Deborah Harris of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, who served on the panel, wrote in dissenting remarks attached to the report that the Department of Transitional Assistance "had a preconceived agenda to eliminate exemptions before the committee even began meeting."
"We strongly agree that we need to provide more opportunities for people with disabilities and other people who are currently exempt from time limits and work requirements in Massachusetts," Harris said yesterday. "Where we part company is where the department says they have to hold a gun to people's heads in order to provide opportunities."
Harris pointed out, for example, that under the recommendations a welfare recipient caring for a disabled family member would meet work requirements, but would be subject to a time limit on receiving benefits.
In 1995, the year before President Bill Clinton signed a federal law overhauling welfare, the Legislature enacted its own plan and received a waiver exempting it from federal welfare rules. Like the federal law, the Bay State's law includes time limits and work requirements: Recipients who are not exempt are limited to 24 months of assistance in any five-year period and must work between 20 hours and 30 hours a week, depending on the age of their youngest child. With its waiver, Massachusetts continues to receive federal money, which it supplements with state tax dollars.
About 40 states received waivers during the 1990s to conduct their own welfare reform experiments. But today only two, Massachusetts and Tennessee, are still in place. The Bay State's 10-year waiver expires on Oct. 1, 2005.
When the Massachusetts welfare overhaul was signed into law in February 1995, there were approximately 103,000 families receiving $693 million per year in cash assistance. Today's 49,000 families receive about $313 million per year, while another $54 million has been funneled into child care for them.
Generally speaking, the federal rules enacted in 1996 are tougher than those currently in effect in Massachusetts, so the state will have to ratchet up its requirements to comply. Complicating matters for Massachusetts is that Congress is considering changes to the federal law.
Hayward said Massachusetts has employed a looser definition of disabled than the federal government. He emphasized that only those who have met the state standard, but not the federal one, will have to comply with work requirements.
"No one ever said we're going to take a severely disabled person and make them eligible for a work requirement," he said. "If you are severely disabled, you are eligible for Social Security disability, and by that federal definition you are exempt."
The report calls on the state to put enough money into its welfare program to ensure that welfare recipients, especially those with disabilities, are assessed properly and that child care, job training, and other programs are in place to help those who can work to do so. It predicts that "meeting the needs of all recipients will require a significant increase in funding," but neither the panel nor Wagner could estimate how much money will be needed.
Harris contends that by carefully delineating federal and state dollars, the state could continue to avoid stricter federal work requirements, since only the federal money has to be spent according to federal rules. She said Representative Antonio F.D. Cabral, the New Bedford Democrat who chairs the Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee, plans to file a bill that adopts that approach.
"We find it ironic and sad that this proposal would impose very strict work requirements on parents who have been identified by the state as having serious impediments to employment," she said.
Greenberger can be reached at greenberger@globe.com. 