Online NewsHour: Welfare Reform in California -- February 11, 1997

TIGHTENING THE WELFARE TRAMPOLINE

February 11, 1997

TRANSCRIPT

According to California Governor Pete Wilson "Any legal job is better than subsidized idleness." Jeffrey Kaye looks at Wilson's committment to reform welfare.

JEFFREY KAYE: Like governors around the country when California's Pete Wilson delivered his annual state of the state speech this year, he renewed his commitment to carry out the federal welfare reform law. That law requires able-bodied welfare recipients to find work.
GOV. PETE WILSON, (R) California: Any legal job is better than subsidized idleness. Any legal job is an acceptable means for entering the work force. There's a lot more dignity in any minimum wage job than in sitting on a couch collecting welfare.
JEFFREY KAYE: The governor proposed a welfare-to-work plan stiffer than federal requirements. While the federal law puts a five-year cap on welfare, California officials want a two-year limit. Wilson's top welfare officials, Sandra Smoley and Eloise Anderson, have been on a campaign to sell the plan. To take effect, the program must be adopted by the legislature.
SANDRA SMOLEY, California Health & Welfare Secretary: The governor has always said that welfare should be like a trampoline; you may be down for a short period, but you should bounce right back up.
JEFFREY KAYE: The California officials are holding meetings with local representatives and opinion leaders around the state.
ELOISE ANDERSON, Director, California Welfare Department: What we've proposed is two time limits: a time limit for people who are already on aid is 24 months; a time limit for new applicants is 12 months.
JEFFREY KAYE: But the reception to the plan among county officials who must implement it has been decidedly mixed. During this conference call meeting one county supervisor phoned in a note of alarm.
COUNTY SUPERVISOR: (on phone) We still have some grave concerns.
SANDRA SMOLEY: Okay. Shoot.
COUNTY SUPERVISOR: We have a very, very high unemployment rate.
SANDRA SMOLEY: I don't happen to know what your unemployment rate is. What is it?
COUNTY SUPERVISOR: Twenty-six.
SANDRA SMOLEY: Excuse me?
PERSON IN ROOM: Twenty-six.
SANDRA SMOLEY: That's major serious.
JEFFREY KAYE: The skeptics on the phone describing a 26 percent unemployment rate were officials in California's rural imperial county. Among them, Social Services Director Jim Semmes who calls welfare reform the challenge of the century.
JIM SEMMES, Imperial County Welfare Department: We estimate in Imperial County one in three people gets some sort of assistance from our department, but we're looking at welfare reform measures that are going to be implemented now, and we are going to have to start performing immediately so you have to have jobs. And Imperial County has not historically had those jobs. We have the lowest per capita income in the state of California. We have a history of high unemployment.
JEFFREY KAYE: The county in California's southeast corner is a land of contrasts. Abundant sun, ample irrigation, and a plentiful work force have turned a former desert into an agricultural bounty. With close to ½ million acres under cultivation Imperial Valley's monetary harvest is rich. Agriculture brings in $1.6 billion a year, more than in any other county in the nation. But the wealth does not filter down. 24 percent of its people live in poverty.
CELESTE CANTU, Imperial Valley Housing Authority: This is our example of pretty poor living conditions.
JEFFREY KAYE: This would be the extreme.
CELESTE CANTU: This would be the extreme. There's other places like this in Imperial County. This is not the only one, but it's an example of the extreme.
JEFFREY KAYE: Cantu, executive director of the Imperial Valley Housing Authority, says this subdivision is also an example of the region's precarious economy. About 140 people live here. The roads are unpaved. There's no sewage system, and the water is piped into homes from a nearby irrigation ditch. Not everyone in Imperial County lives in such dire circumstances, but Cantu forecasts a countywide crisis if residents are denied welfare.
CELESTE CANTU: It's going to mean a lot of people will be hungry. A lot of people won't be able to pay their rent. A lot of people won't be able to clothe their kids and send them to school. Most of the people work in the fields, and they--they work for two months and harvest the asparagus, and then that's over with, and they depend on unemployment until that runs out, and then now they qualify for welfare, for AFDC, and that tides them over until the next season starts.
JEFFREY KAYE: Seasonal employment, seasonal public assistance, and low wages are key components of the Imperial Valley economy. Farm workers such as Cesar Serna say they can't find regular work.
JEFFREY KAYE: Can you work full-time, year-round in Imperial Valley?
CESAR SERNA, Farmer Worker: Yeah. I work the season from here.
JEFFREY KAYE: You work the season.
CESAR SERNA: The season, no more.
JEFFREY KAYE: What do you do?
CESAR SERNA: Cut cauliflower and--
JEFFREY KAYE: And when the harvest is over here, what do you do?
CESAR SERNA: I go open my unemployment.
JEFFREY KAYE: On unemployment.
CESAR SERNA: Yes.
JEFFREY KAYE: You get unemployment.
CESAR SERNA: Yes.
JEFFREY KAYE: When he does work, Serna and his colleagues make $5 an hour with no benefits. Many farm workers make due with low pay by residing in Mexico, where living costs are cheaper. The county borders Mexico and workers who could live legally in the U.S. actually commute. At day's end this time of year, the height of the winter harvest, there is a mile-long traffic jam to cross the border into Mexico. Other farm workers make ends meet as migrants, leaving their families and moving North with harvests. Although aspects of Imperial County's economy are unique, according to the government, nationwide there are 2300 rural counties with jobless rates above 10 percent.
CELESTE CANTU: We're the same as other agricultural areas where our industry, agriculture, requires a ready and waiting able-bodied labor force. When the sun shines and it's time to harvest the asparagus, we need people in the fields at 4 o'clock in the morning, and they have to be available, and they need to harvest that day. And maybe we'll harvest the field today and then let it rest tomorrow, and we need to harvest again the next day. Those same people need to come back, and so we need a stable labor force willing to do that. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay enough to raise a family. It doesn't pay enough to live without some kind of public assistance.
JEFFREY KAYE: Imperial County has been trying to move people from public assistance to work with only limited success. It offers job training in construction, retail trades, and in welding. Five hundred people a year get trained, but only two hundred and ninety get placed in jobs. The need for job creation under the welfare reform law will pose a major problem for the county according to employment training director Sam Couchman.
SAM COUCHMAN, Imperial county Employment Training Department: I would say that we would have to place anywhere in the number of the thousands of people. I mean, I don't know how many it would be. I'm thinking that we would have to place ten times the amount that we place now. We're probably not going to accomplish the levels that the federal government insists establishing for us right now.
JEFFREY KAYE: Why not?
SAM COUCHMAN: Because the jobs are not there, and we have such a high unemployment rate.
JEFFREY KAYE: The county's former Agricultural Commissioner, Claude Finnell, doesn't expect that to change.
CLAUDE FINNELL, Former Agricultural Commissioner: If the people do go off welfare and if they do need jobs, there's not going to be any more jobs than we have now. The people that are working, the numbers of people that are working in the industry, that's just about all you can hire. So unless you fired everybody out here and hired the people coming off welfare, there's not going to be any place for people to work.
JEFFREY KAYE: Lydia Salazar will eventually have to come off welfare under the new law. The mother of four gets AFDC, federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children, when her husband, a farm worker, is not employed.
JEFFREY KAYE: So right now are you receiving AFDC?
LYDIA SALAZAR, Welfare Recipient: Right now, no, because he's working right now.
JEFFREY KAYE: It's the season.
LYDIA SALAZAR: Yeah. Lettuce season.
JEFFREY KAYE: It's the lettuce season.
LYDIA SALAZAR: Yes.
JEFFREY KAYE: So he's out every day working.
LYDIA SALAZAR: Yeah.
JEFFREY KAYE: So when will he stop working?
LYDIA SALAZAR: He will be stopping in March.
JEFFREY KAYE: And then what?
LYDIA SALAZAR: He's unemployed for another two months, we go on AFDC again.
JEFFREY KAYE: But when AFDC runs out and with work scarce, Imperial County welfare officials will face an enormous task. Under California law counties are the providers of last resort, so when welfare recipients are cut off from federal aid, they will be entitled to general assistance from county governments. Elected Supervisor Dean Shores says his county could be facing bankruptcy.
DEAN SHORES, Imperial County Supervisor: In the past our general assistance has been thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year budgeted for general assistance, and now we're looking at the possibility, the reality is that we could go as high as two million dollars in Imperial County.
DEAN SHORES: (on phone) Are you willing to meet with us and work some of these problems out?
SANDRA SMOLEY: Yes, we are.
JEFFREY KAYE: When Shores voiced his concern during the conference call with welfare officials, they sounded sympathetic. There was talk of exemptions for high unemployment areas, and California welfare chief Eloise Anderson suggested the government might help people move.
ELOISE ANDERSON: We may need to help people go where the jobs are. If the jobs aren't in your county, you've got the capability to send them for the interview, doesn't mean you pack ‘em up and send ‘em there, but you may be able to at least send them for the interview where you never were able to do that before, and if they pass the interview and get the job, it may be in everybody's best interest that we get ‘em some relocation money.
DEAN SHORES: It seems to me that the state officials, in part, are contradicting themselves. If you go to some of the seminars that they've held on welfare reform and they've spoke about moving people, but at the same time they want to keep families together. But if you separate the families and you move them out of the area, now you're losing that family support that you've had in the past.
JEFFREY KAYE: Just as many rural areas are struggling to meet the demands of welfare reform urban regions with high unemployment have similar concerns. In California, counties as a group are asking for more money from the state to help ease the transition from welfare to work.

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