Workfare Bill Gets by Senate Panel : But Liberal Amendments Could Bring Governor’s Veto

SACRAMENTO —  With time running out, a proposed two-year extension of San Diego County’s experimental “workfare” program passed a key Senate committee Tuesday. But changes proposed by the committee’s liberal majority have caused the Deukmejian Administration to waver in its support for the program.

Just before the Health and Human Services Committee’s 5-0 endorsement of the bill being pushed by Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego), one high state official said program changes forced into the measure by liberal Democrats “raise some major concerns” about its cost and effectiveness.

Steve Bailey, deputy director of the Department of Social Services, which all along had supported extension of the program, told the panel, “The way the bill has been amended today, we do not support the bill.”

After the hearing, however, Bailey said his comments do not necessarily mean he will urge a gubernatorial veto.

Killea’s bill, which passed the Assembly last week, must still be approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee and the full Senate before it reaches the governor’s desk. Unless the Legislature extends it, San Diego’s 3-year-old workfare program will end June 30.

Bailey said one key change --striking the provision that would result in three months’ loss of benefits for welfare clients who refuse mandatory work assignments--could cost the state $2 million to $3 million during the next two years.

Killea did not object to the change, which was insisted upon by liberals who control the committee.

But Killea had sought to implement the reform only after program officials obtained a guarantee that the liberalized sanctions would not jeopardize federal funding for the program. The committee majority, however, rejected that provision.

Under other changes, welfare clients:

- Would be paid, beginning in September, at the prevailing labor market wage, not the statutory minimum, when working off their monthly grants under the program’s mandatory work requirement.

- Would be exempt from the mandatory work requirement when enrolled in educational or training programs.

- Could not be assigned to tasks that in the past had been performed by laid-off workers.

Welfare rights advocates and other opponents of mandatory work requirements said the changes soften, but do not end, their opposition to the program.