Lawmakers Craft Repairs To Welfare Final Plan Not Expected Until Spring

With the inaugural festivities behind them, state lawmakers are beginning the arduous task of redesigning Washington’s welfare system in a way that promotes work without cutting the safety net out from under the needy.

Rep. Suzette Cooke, R-Kent, has scheduled three hearings this week on her welfare plan, and Sen. Alex Deccio, R-Yakima, is putting the finishing touches on his own plan.

Meanwhile, new Gov. Gary Locke is scrambling to write a plan, and a coalition of 30 organizations representing children and the poor has weighed in with a proposal for $401 million in new spending.

A final welfare plan, if all the parties reach agreement, is not expected until spring. Decisions involving food stamps, job training and child care will hinge on the months-long development of the 1997-98 budget.

In other action this week, committee hearings are scheduled on bills that would restrict abortion, regulate political advertising, revise controversial water policies and break up the giant Department of Social and Health Services.

The Senate may act on a proposal to make permanent a modest cut in property taxes that expires this year. The House passed the measure on Friday, despite objections from Locke and other Democrats who want to pass a bigger tax cut for homeowners.

And state Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Durham will kick off the week with a State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Legislature.

Welfare is expected to be one of the toughest and most controversial issues of the 105-day session that began last week. The federal government has eliminated the 60-year guarantee of public assistance and ordered states to write their own plans.

Cooke’s bill, HB1079, follows the general principles of the federal law.

It would require many welfare recipients to look for work, enroll in a job-training program or go back to school. It also would impose a five-year lifetime limit on benefits, require single teen parents to live in an approved adult-supervised setting and suspend business and driver’s licenses of deadbeat parents.

But Deccio believes Cooke’s plan doesn’t do enough to address one of the most controversial provisions of the federal law the part that denies food stamps and other benefits to legal immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens.

“We will make sure that nobody falls through the cracks,” said Deccio, whose Yakima district includes one of Washington’s highest concentrations of immigrants. “People want welfare reform, but I don’t think they want anyone to get hurt in the process.”

Locke, himself the son of Chinese immigrants, has said he believes the state must find the money to restore the benefits to legal immigrants. Some estimates put the cost of replacing immigrants’ food stamps at $60 million.

That’s also one of the goals of the Children’s Budget Coalition, a well-organized group of 30 organizations that represent Washington’s weakest citizens. The group also included in its $400 million spending proposal additional funding for programs that provide child care, health care and job training for welfare recipients as well as an increase in cash grants to the poor.

Tina Wilbanks, a single mother of two from Snoqualmie, told reporters last week that she had to quit her job at a hospital because she couldn’t afford the $440 monthly cost of her government-subsidized day-care plan.

“One little thing like that can put you back on the welfare system,” Ms. Wilbanks said. “Child care is the biggest expense for people going back to work.”

Deccio and Cooke have said child care will be addressed in their plans. But they’re not interested in increasing welfare grants.

“To follow that kind of philosophy, you really aren’t doing what the federal law wants us to do, which is get people into jobs and off of welfare,” Deccio said.

Some lawmakers have suggested in recent years that the state should reduce benefits to levels similar to those in neighboring states. Legislative analysts have said that Washington welfare recipients receive an average of $800 a month in cash and food stamps, compared to $773 in Oregon and $630 in Idaho.