No. 20
April 30, 1999
By Naomi Lopez

Despite the political rhetoric surrounding the success of national welfare reform, some California lawmakers are keeping a dirty little secret. These lawmakers believe that able-bodied adults should be allowed to linger indefinitely on California’s General Relief program – at county taxpayers’ expense.

Established in 1931, the General Relief program is a state-mandated, but county-funded cash and medical assistance program available to financially needy individuals who do not qualify for federal income, disability, or medical support. The majority of program participants is single, unemployed males.

Many will recall that, in 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWOA), a welfare reform bill aimed to "end welfare as we know it." The law ended the federal cash entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The Act established time limits and work requirements on federal cash assistance in order to give welfare recipients an incentive to find work rather than to remain indefinitely on the public dole.

In light of the success of the federal reform efforts, some California lawmakers are interested in adopting a similar five-year cumulative time limit to the state’s General Relief program. Unfortunately, such a proposal was voted down 1-5 last week in the Assembly Human Services Committee. That means that this proposal will not even be aired before the full Assembly.

Why should individuals who are ineligible for the federal disability program and the TANF program be held to less stringent standards than the truly disabled and individuals with children? This is the key question the Assembly needs to face, not avoid.

California’s General Relief program was created in 1931 and pre-dates most of the federal government’s 79 means-tested programs, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI, the federal disability program). Despite the addition of these federal programs, the state of California still requires that counties operate General Relief programs.

Today, the program primarily serves able-bodied adults without dependents. While counties have some latitude in setting specific benefit schedules, determining eligibility rules, and administering the program, the state maintains policy control, determines program scope, and sets minimum benefit levels. This state-mandated program, which cost counties about $450 million in 1998, is funded entirely by counties and the state is exempt from reimbursement costs.

Its advocates maintain that the program has seen dramatic reductions in caseloads – 10.1 percent in 1997 – but the more than 140,000 recipients in that year is still a full five times the 1980 caseload of just over 28,000. Some of the caseload reduction can be attributed to recent efforts to grant counties more flexibility in administering the program.

Counties have the option of imposing a three-month per year time limit for employable individuals and sanctions for noncompliance with work requirements, but there is no county option for limiting the lifetime benefit. Opponents of General Relief time limits maintain that any imposition of additional rules would create an additional burden on counties. Yet, there seems to be little concern that this state-mandated program imposes enormous costs on county taxpayers. Moreover, there has been scant discussion on whether the program, in light of the federal disability program, has outlived its usefulness.

As a first step, California lawmakers should allow counties to impose lifetime benefit limits for General Relief. The truly disabled would still have ample time to complete the application and verification process for the federal disability program. More important, it would also provide financial relief to taxpayers and financially-distressed county governments.

While allowing counties to impose a lifetime maximum time limit on General Relief benefits may seem harsh, one should consider that Sacramento holds no monopoly on compassion and common sense. California lawmakers should free counties of the burdensome rules that are unfair to everyone involved – the counties, taxpayers, and the needy who are allowed to become dependent on the system.

Enforcing time limits is important because welfare is intended to be used for only a short while by people who are temporarily out of work. It is not intended to be a way of life. Unfortunately, some California lawmakers fail to recognize this important principle. Until they do, there will be no end to welfare as we know it.