Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 24, 1993 TAG: 9311240201
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY BONNIE V. WINSTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Gov. Douglas Wilder announced that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala has granted Virginia's request for a waiver from federal welfare guidelines to allow the four-year pilot program.
The program, the product of a welfare reform study led by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, reverses the traditional strategy of training welfare recipients and then sending them out to find jobs. The program first will identify specific private-sector jobs paying at least $15,000 annually and then match welfare recipients to them.
Employers may get a federal tax break and a refund from state government for a portion of the salary paid to the workers during the first two years.
Instead of a welfare check, participants will receive a "training wage" for up to two years while learning skills needed for the job.
The wage will come from an $8 million trust fund, created from state and federal money that ordinarily would have been used to pay the participants' Aid to Dependent Children benefits, food stamps, child care and transportation.
Once working, participants will repay the trust fund from taxes taken from their paychecks. The money thus will be recycled to train others.
"Virginia's welfare reform initiative represents a major effort that will move people off welfare and into productive, meaningful jobs," Wilder said in a statement released Tuesday by his office.
"This project reinvents our approach to welfare by making public assistance temporary - not lifetime, taxpayer-financed maintenance," Wilder continued.
Howard Cullum, state secretary for health and human resources, said the Virginia Employment Commission will set up a hot line for employers to call if they have jobs. While only 25 to 30 jobs have been identified for the program, Cullum said he expects 600 to be opened within two to three months.
By the end of 1994, Cullum said, 1,000 to 1,200 welfare recipients should have been trained and placed in specific jobs.
Ken Stroupe, spokesman for Gov.-elect George Allen, said Allen is unaware of the specifics of the Wilder initiative and could not comment.
Allen called during the campaign for turning "welfare into workfare." His proposal includes limiting welfare recipients to two years' worth of benefits in any four-year period. However, a person who has exhausted his or her two years of benefits would not be eligible to receive more welfare payments until three years after the last assistance payment.
The proposal includes a bypass provision for hardship cases, however, Stroupe noted.
by CNB