The Ohio Empowerment Coalition is calling for an end to the three year welfare time limit to receive cash assistance in Ohio. As of October 1, 1999, Ohio recipients will have only 12 months left of cash assistance if they have been receiving assistance since October 1,1997. Ohioans should be allowed at least the full five consecutive years allowable under federal welfare policy (using fe e mone ) to receive cash assistance.
Ohio Works First (state welfare) policy allows recipients only three years on cash assistance. After the three years are over, recipients can no longer receive cash assistance for two years. After being off two years, they may be allowed back on for the remaining two years of cash assistance if they can show good cause for needing it. This is a lifetime limit. Once these years are used, a recipient will be ineligible for the rest of her life regardless of how difficult her situation is. States have the option of using state money to extend time limits or eliminate time limits altogether. They simply cannot use TANF (federal welfare) dollars to do this. (See the article on page 2 about positive things other states are doing to soften the blow of the federal time limit.)

 Now is the time for the Ohio Empowerment Coalition and other like-minded groups across the state to take action. The 12 month countdown is beginning. Two thirds of recipients are children. In Hamilton County over half of the children on public assistance are 5 years old or younger. Ohio's harsh policy of time limits will hurt the youngest and most vulnerable members of our Society.

 If you are concerned about Ohio's time limit and want to get involved with the Ohio Empowerment Coalition's campaign, call 513/381-4242.
 

SIGHTINGS OF HEARTS IN OTHER STATES


Some states are not taking as harsh a plan as Ohio is. For example, Vermont does not throw families off the rolls without a means of support. Instead, they are using state money to fund a jobs program that will provide families with guaranteed jobs.

 Connecticut extends the amount of time families can get cash assistance if families are making a "good faith effort" to find employment and comply with work requirements. Even those families denied "extensions'' are financially eligible to receive "safety net services" of eviction prevention, food, clothing and employment services. These families denied extensions can receive 12 months of rental assistance.

 Texas exempts recipients from the state time li mit six months at a time due to "unique personal circumstances" if they are actively applying for work.

 Other positive state policies include: Indiana, Arizona, Rhode Island and Texas time limit only the "adult" portion of the cash assistance; children in these states can continue to receive cash assistance.

 Maryland time limits the "adult portion", but children are still eligible for voucher payments.

 New York provides a voucher for the entire family after they reach the time limit.

 Maine does not have a time limit.

 The Ohio Empowerment Coalition advocates that Ohio's time limit be extended to at least the five consecutive years allowable under federal law. At the same time, we call for an end to federal time limits altogether,

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

ON TIME LIMITS


Sunday, August 22, 1999 marks the third unhappy anniversary of the 1996 federal welfare law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). This is the law that set in place the five year lifetime limit for poor families to be able to receive welfare assistance (with federal money). The law basically dismantled the safety net for poor families and allowed states to design or eliminate welfare programs with little federal oversight. The 1996 law allowed, for a first time, harsh full-family sanctions against poor families, what we are currently dealing with in Ohio. Federal law, though not requiring full-family sanctions, allows states like ours to completely cut off cash assistance to families "under sanction" or, in other words, under punishment. Most states have fortunately not chosen to be as mean-spirited as Ohio; 36 states cut only a portion of the cash assistance to sanctioned households on a first time sanction.

 The 1996 federal law also requires adult recipients to work, including those with small children, but at the same time ended the federal guarantee of child care assistance to welfare recipients who find jobs or are required to do workfare. Fortunately, Ohio has kept this guarantee of child care for recipients and for one year after they leave welfare for a paid job.
The federal law also severely limited the amount of time welfare recipients could attend college, G.E.D. classes or vocational training and receive cash assistance. States have the option of seeking waivers or kicking in state money to expand the allowance for education. With higher education degrees, recipients would have a fighting chance at getting livable wage jobs. So far less than a handful of states are doing this.

 At a time in America when 20% of our country's children are living at or below the "official" poverty level, and monitoring reports are stating that families are having to rely more on food pantries and soup kitchens to eat, surely this is the time for Congress to reevaluate the welfare law. At a time in America when there are I MILLION CHILDREN HOMELESS EACH NIGHT across our nation (as many as during the Depression, according to a study released by the Better Homes Foundation) it is urgent for Congress to reevaluate federal welfare policy that ends assistance for women with children.

 Monitoring studies from states that have already reached time limits, such as Massachusetts, paint a bleak picture of what is happening to America's poorest families. A recent report by NETWORK, a Catholic social ustice lobby group, reported that there has been a large increase in the numbers of families in the ten states studied where families have neither job income or public assistance. These families are called "the disconnected." Significant numbers of families with children are relying on food pantries and soup kitchens to survive, according to the report.

 Senator Paul Wellstone, Democratic Senator from Minnesota, recently stated in response to recent White House claims that "welfare

 reform" is successful, "There's been a flurry of credible reports suggesting that all is not well with welfare reform. But President Clinton and Vice President Gore continue to claim that welfare is 'working'. What they overlook is why, at a time when the welfare rolls have been cut in half and the economy is booming, we now are finding that millions more children are going to bed hungry each night; demand for emergency food assistance is growing; millions of poor families are dropping off the Food Stamp rolls faster than economic indicators would predict; and former welfare recipients are losing their medical coverage, cannot make the rent and utilities, and are unable to afford child care. These are not the results of successful reform. " (Source: Workfare-Fight listserv)


"Hospitality," (8/99 edition) a newsletter of the Open Door Community, a homeless shelter in Atlanta, Georgia, reports that an Atlanta newspaper ran a story about welfare recipients who were able to leave the welfare rolls, at least temporarily. They were hired for minimum wage to sort garbage in a factory, Environmental Technologies Group, a for profit, private company. However, the company was not making enough of a profit, so it got rid of the welfare recipients, and contracted out with the Georgia prisons instead. The welfare recipients lost their minimum wage, no benefits jobs, and women prison inmates were selected to sort garbage instead. The company now gets FREE labor from prison inmates and doesn't have to pay salaries to workers. (In Georgia, inmates get paid nothing for their labor.) Now recipients have to compete with prison inmates for job opportunities! To Environmental Technologies Group, prison inmates are even better than welfare recipients to "improve the,, bottom line." (President Clinton was recently quoted telling business executives that welfare recipients are "good for the bottom line." ("Cincinnati Enquirer")