Business Asked To Help Cap Welfare Costs

Welfare reform has the potential to halt the program’s escalating drain on the state treasury, but only if Idaho businesses do their part, state Health and Welfare Director Linda Caballero said Wednesday.

“We can accomplish reform without asking for any increase in state funding,” Caballero told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

But the key, she said, is to make sure welfare recipients can find jobs that will take them off the dole and make them contributing members of society.

“If welfare participants can’t work, if they can’t get the training or the work experience they need to get work, if every community and employment door is closed to them because they’re on welfare, then welfare simply won’t work,” she said.

“It requires a new public-private partnership where welfare participants, local communities and employers work together.”

In fact, failure by the state to have 30 percent of welfare recipients working at least 25 hours a week in 1998 and 50 percent working 30 hours a week in 2002 will cost Idaho millions of dollars in withheld federal support, increasing the burden on state and local resources.

Finding work will be important to recipients since there is a two-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits.

Campaigns have been launched in each of the state’s seven districts to get employers and others in communities involved in the job transition effort that begins in earnest this summer.

“And a lot of people are real interested in what we do,” Caballero said.

If the jobs are available, she predicted the Aid to Families with Dependent Children caseload that peaked at 9,000 in 1995 will slip below 6,500 in 2,000. That would slash cash assistance by $11 million, although some of that money will be used to bolster the work program.

The outlook offered a major boost to lawmakers, scratching in every corner for extra cash to pump into education. They have watched the state’s share of welfare costs jump 30 percent, from $15.7 million in 1994 to nearly $21 million this year.

The other critical factor will be making child care available to welfare participants as they enter the work force. The federal government provided $4 million for that program last year and will pump and estimated $18 million into it in the coming budget year.

By the turn of the century, child care expenditures will be near $24 million.

That should be enough to meet Idaho’s needs, Caballero said. The potential problem will be finding enough child-care providers to accept the money and care for the children.