Since Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, unveiled his budget nearly three months ago, his administration has rigidly stuck to its plan to cap Reach Up benefits, despite the chilly reception his proposal received from lawmakers on the day it was introduced. Substantive limits to the welfare-to-work program were formally rejected by the House last month.
The administration’s attempts to persuade Senate and House leaders to accept the new limits have apparently failed. On Wednesday, officials gave the Senate Appropriations Committee a “counterproposal” — just two days before the committee is slated to vote on its version of the budget.
While the proposal has been refurbished, the official rhetoric has remained the same. Shumlin’s new proposal makes several concessions, but it aggressively punishes families that fail to comply with the program requirements within just four months, and effectively eliminates their right to appeal.
Time limits remain the cornerstone of the governor’s proposal, but his revised approach delays the onset of a “cap” by six months, from October 2013 to April 2014. It also adopts the five-year limit favored by the House. Shumlin’s original proposal called for an on-again, off-again cap that would have terminated a family’s benefits temporarily after three years and then permanently after five years on the program.
But while the new plan postpones the blow for some families, households that aren’t meeting the program requirements fare far worse.
All Reach Up participants work with their case manager to draw up a plan to find employment. If they don’t stick to that plan, they are “sanctioned.”
Right now, that means the family’s cash grant is docked $75 a month for the first three months of sanctions, and $150 up until the five-year mark, and then $225 onward, indefinitely.
There are currently 169 “sanctioned” families, and the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families (DCF), Dave Yacovone, says there should be more, but case managers haven’t had time to process them all.
The governor’s new plan kicks “sanctioned” families off the program after just four months. Over the course of those first three months, it reduces the grant from $75 to $125 to $175. At the four-month mark, families would be expelled from the program. Families would be eligible to reapply for Reach Up after six months.
Christopher Curtis, an attorney for Vermont Legal Aid, said this proposal is a major breach in the state’s welfare policy.
“In very short order families who fall out of compliance with the program will be penalized,” Curtis said. “This is way out of step with what Vermont has previously done.”
Yacovone says sanctions are an effective way to bring families back into compliance, and he wants to see those behavior changes occur more quickly.
“It’s surely more aggressive, and it’s trying to get people to change their behavior quicker,” Yacovone said.
The governor’s original proposal would have subjected sanctioned families to the same time limits as other Reach Up families.
The plan — unveiled by Yacovone late Wednesday afternoon — is the administration’s second last-minute conciliatory gesture of the week. On Monday, officials offered a revised budget, which, among other things, trimmed $5 million from the child-care proposal.
Yacovone said the administration revisited its approach largely because of concerns raised by lawmakers.
“All along we’ve wanted to do what we felt was best for kids and families and through this deliberative process of going from committee to committee, some really good points were raised about rolling this out in a way that has little or no collateral damage, and by sizing it in a smaller package — a five-year time limit versus a three-year time limit — I think the likelihood that we will be able to do better by people is enhanced,” Yacovone said.
The House agreed to a five-year time limit, but voted to continue to provide child-only grants to those families. Child-only grants are slightly smaller — about $100 less, on average — than the normal Reach Up grant. Shumlin administration officials said this provision would effectively render any time limit meaningless.
Members of the Appropriations Committee expressed concern that they’ve received a rash of radical policy tweaks just days before they are expected to finalize the budget.
Sen. Sally Fox, D-Chittenden, asked Yacovone: “What happens to the children?”
Yacovone explained the need for time limits. “For some there’s a complacency that develops,” he said. “There is a package of services and people become complacent and I want to try to break that cycle.”
Yacovone told VTDigger that the fact that caseload predictions have been revised downward several times since the governor’s budget address in January — it will now cost $4.2 million less than originally forecast — also factored into the decision to revise the plan. But, he contended, “More important than the fiscal savings … children are better served by this.”
Fox, who is a member of both the Appropriations and the Health and Welfare committees, said the proposal should have been brought to the policy committee first.
“It’s unfortunate that we have such a short time frame to digest the information,” Fox told VTDigger.
“The fact that it’s in the Appropriation Committee, which is really about the money, and the Health and Welfare Committee being concerned about the policy implications… I wish we had more time, but I acknowledge the fact that we are under deadline,” Fox said.
Karen Lafayette, a spokeswoman for the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council, was taken aback by the proposal’s timing.
“We’re attempting to do a total rewrite of Reach Up policy which can have dramatic effect on peoples lives at the 11th hour through legislative committees,” Lafayette said. “There’s been no stakeholder input.”
Correction: It was originally reported that there are about 20 sanctioned families. There are actually 169 “sanctioned” families.Approximately 20 of them have been on Reach Up for 60 months or more.
