Batt’s Welfare Plan Is Taking Shape Reform Panel Will Be Named Next Week, Governor Says

Gov. Phil Batt will name up to 15 members, including a welfare recipient, to his newly created Welfare Reform Advisory Council.

The selections, to be announced next week, will formally set in motion the governor’s campaign promise to reassess the state’s welfare system in an order to refashion it and eliminate reliance on welfare.

“I am not opposed to welfare,” Batt said on Friday in signing the executive order creating the council. “There will always be some people … who need long-term assistance. And there will always be people who need short-term help.”

“But what we hear over and over from welfare recipients, ‘I want to work,’ and we want to make sure they can,” Batt said. “In many cases, financially it’s more attractive to take the welfare than it is to work.”

In first announcing his intentions on March 1, Batt said that the goal was to make the welfare system more efficient and effective did not necessarily mean that it would become less expensive to operate.

And he said on Friday that the advisory council will not only focus on injecting self-sufficiency, responsibility and work into the system but also on enabling the state to accommodate what he believes will is an inevitable shift in responsibility for welfare programs from the federal to state governments with less federal cash to do the job.

“It’s important to me that Idaho be compassionate to those who need help,” he said. “But we also must be realistic.”

The reform campaign’s attention will initially be on the Aid to Families with Dependent Children and will consider issues like work incentives, time limits for assistance, out-of-wedlock children and more children while on welfare.