THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 2, 1995 TAG: 9509300203
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
You'd have thought the '60s had come back around this summer. Whether in Washington or Hampton Roads, the movers and shakers debated poverty and the cost to taxpayers.
Not for a generation have the central cities received this kind of attention. Politicians in Washington and Richmond sounded welfare reform-minded, while an idea advanced by the Urban Partnership, a coalition of 18 Virginia cities, would enlist suburban taxpayers in support of the old cities such as Norfolk and Portsmouth.
Like a lot of ideas early on, the welfare reform notions springing up in Washington, Tidewater and Richmond seem in conflict. But common ground could emerge once the General Assembly convenes.
``I tend to think we will at least get a new understanding,'' said Norfolk city manager James Oliver. ``Whether we will get any action, I don't know.''
Of course, more than time separates the '60s and '90s. By the middle '60s a large government apparatus had grown up to administer more than 150 federal urban aid programs, which were put in place largely out of a conviction the states refused the task.
If public policy then intended to lift the poor above the government's definition of poverty, public policy today means to put the poor to work. Both attitudes stem from the prevailing mood in America. Then we felt wealthy. Now we feel constrained.
Nowhere was the current mood more evident than in the welfare reform measure passed last month by the U.S. Senate and sent to a House-Senate committee for shaping into a final bill.
The Senate version would cut federal welfare spending $65 billion by 2002, require able adults on welfare to find jobs, limit lifetime welfare benefits for adults to five years, and hand the states responsibility for the entire welfare budget, currently about $200 billion a year nationwide.
In tune with the sentiment of Republicans on Capital Hill who want welfare chores returned to the states, Virginia's cities' coalition honed its own welfare reform ideas. Urban Partnership members gathered in Richmond last week, considering a package of proposals they'll show the Virginia General Assembly. One item concerned the cost welfare imposed on the commonwealth's old cities.
``The notion was that some of the burden of the central cities would be shifted to the state,'' said partnership board member James F. Babcock, chief executive of First Virginia Bank of Tidewater. ``To pull that off might require the redistribution of responsibilities. To fund that you might have to change the tax laws.''
If the state shouldered more welfare tasks, so the theory goes, Tidewater cities could jointly spend more cash on other endeavors, such as regional economic development. What makes the idea controversial is the reaction in young cities like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Taxpayers there might rebel if they thought too much of their tax money poured into the old cities.
What could help determine the success of all this is whether welfare recipients, if they are required to work, can find suitable jobs. At first glance it seems daunting.
Hampton Roads numbers 1.5 million people in some 500,000 households whose total personal income each year exceeds $24 billion.
That's an average income of about $48,000 per household, though in fact nearly 92,000 households, or 18 percent, have an annual income of $15,000 or less.
Among these 92,000 homes, one of every three households receive some form of public assistance, totaling about $100 million a year. This includes about 23,000 households enrolled in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the government program commonly known as welfare. The average family on AFDC in Virginia receives assistance for about 30 months.
Of the AFDC households on the Peninsula and the southside, 9,400 are in Norfolk and Portsmouth, the cities widely regarded as the region's urban core. Living in those households are about 17,000 children and perhaps as many as 18,000 adults.
If the men and women receiving welfare are trained and trickled slowly into the labor force, the region's job market might absorb as many as 2,000 a year, depending on the economy. While Hampton Roads produces 15,000 to 25,000 new jobs a year, about 20,000 residents turn 18 every year, and many enter the workforce.
Norfolk has had some success with limited training programs for the poor, but to take on a wholesale program, the city undoubtedly will need help. by CNB