
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994                   TAG: 9402250023
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REFORM AND ORDER

ABOUT A third of the 13,000 fugitives from justice in the Cleveland area, authorities there estimate, are also collecting welfare benefits. While one arm of government is having trouble tracking down the warrant skippers and parole violators to bring them to justice, another is finding them to send them money.

Odds are slim that Virginia's welfare rolls are as dotted with fugitives as Ohio's seem to be. Someone in big-league trouble with the law is likelier to be young than old, able-bodied than disabled, male than female. Unlike Ohio, Virginia has no state general-assistance program whose enrollees would include very many young, able-bodied males.

But taxpayer subsidization of flight from justice is hardly an Ohio-only issue.

In the first place, all 50 states participate in the food-stamp, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs. Only in AFDC, whose enrollees are mainly women, do federal rules allow welfare workers and law-enforcement authorities to share information. In none of the three programs is fugitive status a factor in determining eligibility.

Every state, in other words, probably has some on-the-lam welfare beneficiaries, even if not as many as in states with general-assistance programs.

More important, the failure to connect fugitives to welfare benefits - indeed, prohibitions against administrative tools that could do so - reflects the chaos of government's response to the plight of people whose lives are in chaos to begin with.

The point of welfare reform shouldn't be short-term savings. The point should be long-term savings that will result if the lifetime-dependency culture can be eradicated - the saving of lives caught up in the culture, as well as of taxpayers' money. Then welfare can be restored to its proper purpose: to help those who through disability or age cannot sustain themselves, and to provide temporary relief to the able-bodied indigent until they can get back on their feet.

Similarly, the point of keeping fugitives off the welfare rolls shouldn't be to deny bread to the hungry or milk to their babies. For those whose trouble with the law has been relatively minor and nonviolent, the point should be to bring a measure of order to their lives by resolving their fugitive status as a part of whatever welfare assistance they qualify for.

And for those who've committed grave and violent crimes, there's already a program for providing basic food, shelter and clothing needs. It's called jail.

by CNB