welfare

STATE WELFARE REFORM LAWS EXPERIMENTAL

MINNESOTA REGULATIONS APPARENTLY MORE GENEROUS THAN WISCONSIN'S

   Minnesota may be getting tough on welfare recipients, but its neighbors are getting tougher, a survey of surrounding states' new welfare rules finds.
   Of seven states in the region:
   --Minnesota will have essentially the highest cash welfare payments.
   --The reduction in benefits for recipients who violate work requirements will be the smallest.
   --In determining how much working welfare recipients can earn before their checks are cut off, Minnesota will have the second most generous system, behind Iowa.
   The survey by the News-Tribune showed that as the region shapes new welfare systems that demand work and limit benefits, Minnesota is keeping its reputation for liberal compassion.
   But Minnesota officials have a unique waiting period that they hope will discourage welfare recipients in other states from moving to Minnesota to take advantage of higher benefits. New residents can't collect welfare benefits for a month; then for a year, they will receive checks at the level of their previous state. The only other waiting period in the region is much shorter -- two months in Wisconsin.
   ''Our goal was to make welfare a neutral factor in coming to Minnesota,'' said Ann Sessoms, a division director at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Sessoms is heading up implementation of the welfare reform legislation passed in April.
   ''Other states may have some stricter work requirements and different ways they're approaching getting clients to work,'' Sessoms said. ''Ours was designed to work for families when the economy isn't good. The program has strengths that programs in other states don't have if there are not jobs available. We are all anxious to learn about other people's successes in this area.''

Consider aid temporary

   The News-Tribune surveyed plans for the overhaul of cash assistance, formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan and Illinois.
   Some of the rules are not entirely new: To varying degrees, the Great Lakes states had been experimenting with work requirements before the U.S. Congress ordered states to reform welfare in 1996. Now, most states are tightening rules further or applying them statewide, with new rules going into effect between next month and July 1998.
   In all the area states, the essential element of welfare reform is similar: requiring recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition for continuing to receive monthly cash assistance. That's the core of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the federal name for the system that replaces Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
   In two-parent families, Minnesota will expect one of the parents to spend 35 hours a week in work-related activities, which are broadly defined, soon after beginning to receive benefits; the other parent has a 20-hour weekly requirement. Single parents have a 20-hour minimum starting six months after they start receiving benefits.
   Wisconsin's application of that rule is toughest. While most states start the flow of checks first and require work after time has passed, Wisconsin calculates welfare checks based on how many actual hours the person has spent working or in work-related activities such as job-searching.
   It is the conditions that surround the check and the work that make Minnesota's plan seem more generous.
   Minnesota legislators decided this year to send a maximum of $437 per month to each family of two (excluding food stamps) and $532 per month to a family of three starting in July.
   Wisconsin's W-2 plan, which goes into effect in September, has the highest maximum payment in the area -- $625 to $673 per month for a recipient spending 40 hours a week in work activities, regardless of family size.
   But Wisconsin welfare payments have far tighter restrictions: A person in work activities for only 20 hours a week would get half that. By contrast, a single parent in Minnesota can get the maximum payment for six months for no work activity and for half-time work afterward. That makes Minnesota's payment the most liberal.
   Minnesota also has the slowest schedule of penalties for recipients who violate the work-preparation agreements they sign with local caseworkers. Minnesota will dock checks by 10 percent in the first month, 50 percent for two months thereafter. Other states will reduce checks by 50 percent immediately or may cut them off altogether on the first violation.
   The North Star State goes softest, too, in easing working recipients off the program. As recipients' earned income rises through wages, all the states plan to let their total incomes rise by reducing their welfare checks at a slower rate.
   Minnesota's phase-out is one of the most gradual, behind Iowa and Illinois. With the exception of Iowa, Minnesota has the highest upper-income limit on eligibility. Minnesota lets recipients earn 120 percent of the federal poverty level before cutting their welfare checks to zero; Iowa, about 130 percent for a family of two or four, 145 percent for a family of three. Illinois' cutoff, meanwhile, is a relatively low 100 percent of poverty.
   Minnesota policymakers said they're confident their system will move welfare recipients into the work force as efficiently as their neighbors' systems.
   ''Our grant level is one of the highest, but our tough work requirements are in place that should do the job that we intended to do,'' said Minnesota Sen. Don Samuelson, DFL-Brainerd, who sponsored this year's welfare overhaul legislation. ''I'm not too concerned.''
   ''I think the jury is still out,'' said Bonnie Becker, director of self-sufficiency programs for the Minnesota Department of Human Services. ''All of these programs are new to the various states. Over the next year or two, as we compare variations from program to program, we'll see what type of program yields the best results.''
   Other findings:
   --More states declined to penalize welfare recipients for having children after joining the welfare rolls. Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and South Dakota will increase a family's welfare check in such cases; Wisconsin, Illinois and North Dakota will not.
   --Most states are putting off the question of what types of recipients will be able to collect benefits after five years. The 1996 federal law set five years as the maximum length of time most people can receive welfare over a lifetime, but allowed states to grant waivers for up to 20 percent of their caseloads. Minnesota and the other states surveyed to date have specified few categories of people who will be exempt. Iowa has specified none; Wisconsin plans to consider individual exceptions case by case.
   ''Washington said, 'You guys (the states) are the laboratories of democracy,' '' said David Blaska, spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. ''The beauty of this thing is, we're going to see whose experiment works.''

Daniel Bernard writes about state politics and jobs. Contact him at (218) 720-4154.