Reprieve for DC TANF Families (We Hope)

The DC Council came through for families in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — as best it could, given that the budget itself was already set in stone.

After some lengthy and heated discussion, it approved an amendment to the Budget Support Act* that would delay further benefits cuts for families who’ve participated in the program for 60 months or more.

And a good thing too. As I (and others) have argued, these families shouldn’t be penalized because the program has egregiously failed to identify their strengths and needs and to link them to the appropriate mix of services.

The additional year before the cuts resume will supposedly give them an opportunity to benefit from program improvements the Department of Human Services is rolling out.

“Supposedly” because DHS still has a long way to go before completing the assessments that will form the basis for individually-tailored training and supportive services plans. Only 25% completed now, according to Councilmember Jim Graham, who introduced the amendment.

At the current rate, some of the at-risk parents won’t have anything like a full year to benefit from their plans. Whether even a year would be enough to enable some of them to secure — and retain — living-wage jobs is another question.

All but three Councilmembers voted for the amendment — a tribute to some very fine advocacy. That plus an evident desire on the part of a couple of Councilmembers not to be on the losing side of a cause that obviously had majority support.

The Council also unanimously rubber-stamped then-Chairman Kwame Brown’s substitute for the BSA it passed in mid-May.

This too is good news for TANF families and those who care about them because the revised BSA folds in some additional provisions that were part of the proposed TANF Time Limits Amendment — or rather folds in something akin to them.

Most would expand eligibility for POWER (Program on Work, Employment, and Responsibility) — thus shifting some parents out of TANF and shielding them, at least temporarily, from the 60-month time limit.

These are parents who can’t reasonably be expected to meet the TANF program’s regular work activity requirements — those who, for example, are receiving services to help them recover from the trauma of domestic violence, caring for a severely disabled family member or still in their teens and enrolled in school.

Another provision could give parents an additional 24 months to continue their postsecondary education or participation in a training program leading to a certificate or the equivalent.

Smart move since enabling these parents to get those degrees and certificates is the very best thing the program could do to help them achieve self-sufficiency.

Still another provision would prohibit DHS from counting toward the 60 months time that a child received benefits while living with an adult or adults who didn’t.

These so-called child-only cases are often exempt from the standard time limit — as they surely ought to be since one can hardly expect a child to engage in direct preparation for work.

So the Council did the right thing.

But (why is there always a but?) the benefits cuts will go forward as scheduled unless the Chief Financial Officer projects more revenues than the budget assumes.

Specifically, the estimated $3.8 million cost of the delay will be carved out of the additional $14.7 million for TANF job training that’s second on the list of priorities that will get funded if revenue estimates are higher.

In other words, the fate of more than 6,100 families — including nearly 14,000 children — hinges on a projected revenue increase of at least $10.8 million.

The exemptions and exceptions also hinge on higher revenue projections and would be paid for by another carve-out from the job training pool — this one about $1.75 million, according to the BSA.

As some disturbed Councilmembers observed, the time limits delay will eat into additional funding needed to provide appropriate job training and other services — assuming the hoped-for revenues materialize.

So will the exemptions, though no one mentioned it.

The end result is thus a tad perverse, but the Council chose it by not grappling with the timing and coverage of the benefits phase-out earlier.

Or perhaps I should say the former Council Chairman chose it since the BSA was largely an artifact of his private dealings with Mayor Gray’s staff, and both he and the administration apparently underestimated the support the benefits delay would have.

I have nothing like the expertise that would be needed to comb through the Fiscal Year 2013 budget and identify funds that could obviously have been better spent on benefits for the very poor families who rely on them — and on training that would enable many of them to be off “welfare,” which they want as much as the Mayor and Council do.

I’ve just got a hard time believing that everything in the $9.4 billion budget is more important.

As things stand now, we’ve just got to keep our fingers crossed.

* The Budget Support Act is the package that makes whatever legislative changes the Budget Request Act, i.e., the budget proper, requires.

DC Council Cuts TANF Benefits, Approves Full Cut-Offs

Our lawmakers on the DC Council had decided to wrap up lawmaking for the year on December 21. They had a long agenda and, with Christmas fast approaching, probably shopping to finish up, parties to get to, etc.

So they decided to vote on a revised Budget Support Act* that they’d seen for the first time less than a day before. Decided not to worry that they wouldn’t have a second chance to vote, since Council Chairman Vincent Gray had introduced it as emergency legislation.

Gray had obviously had second thoughts about the impending cuts in cash benefit to families in the District’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Also third thoughts, since the final TANF provisions were significantly different from those I’d seen in a version of the substitute BSA circulated several days before.

For poor families dependent on TANF, there’s some tentative good news about cash benefits. Also some news that very ominous — both about cash benefits directly and about sanctions that will henceforward put families at risk of no benefits at all.

Cash Benefits

As I earlier wrote, the Council voted in early December to phase out benefits for TANF families who’d been in the program for a total of more than five years. This would have meant a 20% cut each year until 2015, when benefits would have been zeroed out.

The final version of the BSA imposes a 20% reduction on these families’ benefits after February 2011, but specifies no further reductions. In other words, it reverts to Mayor Fenty’s budget gap closing proposal.

However, the final BSA allows the mayor to adjust the level of TANF assistance payments through the rulemaking process. It thus opens the door to further benefits reductions.

We’ve got some evidence that Gray has his eye on them. The prior draft of his substitute BSA imposed an across-the-board 12% reduction. For a family of three, this would have meant a maximum of $377 a month – less than 25% of the federal poverty line.

Councilmembers got wind of this, thanks to some swift and effective advocacy. Gray apparently got enough pushback to opt for a strategic retreat. But I think it’s prudent to view further benefits reductions as dormant, not dead.

Sanctions

The final BSA apparently authorizes full family sanctions, i.e., termination of all cash assistance when a participating parent fails to comply with some program requirement.

I say “apparently” because the relevant provision doesn’t expressly authorize full family sanctions. But Chairman Gray referred to them in summarizing the BSA changes, and no one else on the Council piped up to challenge him.

As some of you may recall, Mayor Fenty’s mid-2009 budget gap closing proposal included full family sanctions. The Council rejected them — and wisely.

An Urban Institute study found that many District TANF recipients who’d been sanctioned faced serious challenges that might hinder not only their ability to comply with the work requirements, but even to understand them. Studies of TANF participants in other jurisdictions have raised similar concerns.

Yet the Council has decided to let the Department of Human Services move forward with a three-phase sanctions plan, ending in a total benefits cut-off for any failure to “participate [in] or complete an Individual Responsibility Plan,” i.e., the program of activities the participant is supposed to follow.

The final BSA directs the mayor to submit proposed sanctions policy rules to the Council by April 1. They’ll become effective 45 business days later unless the Council officials disapproves them.

But DHS has until September 30 to fully implement its TANF program reform plan. It can thus begin imposing full family sanctions before it has improved assessments, referral processes, training or other services.

Does it make any sense to punish recipients based on their failure to comply with an Individual Responsibility Plan that may be egregiously inappropriate? Because they haven’t received the services they’d need to comply?

What’s the big rush here anyway?

We know that DHS and some Councilmembers are very concerned about the high percentage of District TANF families who’ve been in the program for more than five years — close to 45%, according to recent testimony by DHS Director Clarence Carter.

How many of them could “graduate” if they’d just buckle down to their required job preparation and/or search activities is an open question. Full family sanctions supporters imply the answer is a lot of them. They just need a greater incentive than the partial sanctions already used.

During the Council’s discussion of the BSA, Chairman Gray said that we “need to encourage people to go to work,” implying that harsher sanctions will do that. But he also linked the new sanctions provision to his decision to, at least temporarily, limit the benefit reduction for long-term participants.

Councilmember Marion Barry, who supported the sanctions provision, noted that the existing appeals process will probably delay completion of the 20% reductions until the end of next year. In other words, not much by way of immediate savings from them.

But when Mayor Fenty proposed the reductions, they were supposed to contribute $4.6 million to closing the budget gap.

That could explain the rush.

As Legal Momentum recently reported, full family sanctions have contributed to large TANF caseload reductions. And states have financial incentives to impose them rather than rely on partial sanctions that preserve assistance for the children in a family.

With full family sanctions, states can avert penalties for failing to meet the federal work participation standard — something the District has struggled with. They can also free up funds for a variety of programs and services available to non-TANF families, e.g., child care, early childhood education.

So is the Council really hoping to bring a lot more families into compliance? Or is it banking on the savings DHS will realize by getting jobless families out of the TANF program?

Could it be hoping to mitigate budget constraints by having additional TANF funds for programs more politically popular than “welfare?”

* The Budget Support Act is one of two pieces of legislation needed to enact or make changes in the District’s budget. It makes whatever changes in existing legislation are necessary for the executive branch to carry out the spending directions in the Budget Request Act, i.e., the actual budget. Like most District legislation, it ordinarily must be passed by the Council twice.