Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502060074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The Democratic alternative, which combines a few elements of the Allen plan with the bulk of a welfare-reform package approved last year, is likely to be the blueprint for the final legislation the Democrat-controlled Assembly approves.
On the Senate side, welfare legislation died in committee last week.
Although Republicans said they will try to force a House vote on the administration's tougher proposal, interviews over the last week suggest that Democrats are coalescing around the sort of plan approved by the House Committee on Health, Institutions and Welfare.
Both parties call their plans ``welfare-to-work'' legislation, meaning that some recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children would have to work for their benefits. But the plans are substantially different in scope, tone and - potentially - cost.
The Democrat-favored bill is a pilot program, phasing in 9,000 of the state's 74,000 AFDC recipients over a three-year period. Individuals would be required to work or get training for two years, after which benefits would end.
Benefits could be extended, however, for people who failed to find work, despite a good-faith effort.
If the pilot works well, the General Assembly could vote later to extend the program statewide.
The administration's plan would limit nonexempt welfare recipients to collecting no more than 24 months' worth of benefits in a five-year period, although child care and medical support could continue for up to 12 months longer. In most cases, the recipients would have to work for the full two years they were collecting, even if they were involved in educational pursuits.
Only in extreme hardship cases could an individual get an extension, and then for no more than six months.
The Allen plan would would apply statewide after five years.
About 49,000 AFDC recipients would be eligible to be phased into the work plan gradually over that period. In figuring costs, the administration has assumed that almost half of those will drop off welfare voluntarily before the two years end. Their five-year cost estimates cover about 26,000 people.
The gradual approach is far safer, considering the potential impact on the children of welfare recipients, said Del. David Brickley, D-Woodbridge, who sponsored the bill approved by the House committee.
The Allen bill would ``inevitably make a certain number of poor Virginians and their families homeless,'' said Steve Meyers, an attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.
Secretary of Health and Human Resources Kay Coles James countered that critics had taken ``the heart and soul'' out of a plan developed over the last year by a commission appointed by Allen.
With the alternative, ``we still don't have enough teeth in here to make it an effective welfare-to-work program,'' said Del. Robert McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach, who carried Allen's bill.
The House committee voted 12-10 along party lines against the administration's bill. The tally for Brickley's alternative was 14-3.
Del. Joyce Crouch, R-Lynchburg, later said she and other Republicans voted for the measure as a tactical move to ensure that the GOP's alternative could be heard when the welfare bill reaches the House floor.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB