In an attempt to pare the state`s huge welfare caseload by a third, a new state initiative announced Thursday by Gov. James Thompson will require 160,000 public aid recipients to participate in schooling and training aimed at placing them in full-time jobs.
The program will be mandatory for all able-bodied welfare clients in Illinois except for women with children under the age of 6. However, those mothers–another 120,000 recipients–will be encouraged to participate voluntarily.
As part of the effort, which represents a major shift in the state`s welfare philosophy, Thompson and Gregory Coler, state public aid director, set a goal Thursday of placing 112,500 welfare recipients–one third of all public aid cases–in full-time jobs by June 30, 1988.
The setting of such a public goal, particularly one so ambitious, is unprecedented in Illinois where, until recently, the state public aid department saw itself essentially as the caretaker of welfare recipients, primarily concerned with distributing checks and guarding against cheating by recipients and state workers.
”We`ve got to stop thinking about welfare as an end unto itself,” Coler said. ”Welfare has to be a temporary stop on the road to a job and independence.
”The job of the department of public aid is not just a check, but a chance. What these people need is a job.”
The Illinois initiative reflects a growing national move to curtail chronic dependance on public aid, which is placing an increasing burden on state and federal budgets. Similar programs are underway or under
consideration in several other states.
Yet the move holds potential political dangers for a Republican governor who is running for re-election–pitfalls that Thompson acknowledges. ”This represents a new philosophical approach,” he said. ”How much we`ll succeed over the next three years, no one can say.”
Within hours of Thompson`s announcement, the political questions were being raised.
”I think that his motives are suspect,” said Robert Benjamin, press secretary for former Sen. U.S. Adlai Stevenson, the expected Democratic nominee to oppose Thompson in the 1986 gubernatorial race. ”I think his claims of placing 100,000 people in jobs is very unrealistic.
”These are the sorts of things that should have been done years ago. If the governor thought it is a good idea now, then he should have done this a long time ago. Now I think he`s reacting out of fear of losing the election.” Nonetheless, another Illinois Democrat, U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, said, ”The general idea of encouraging people to be productive is one I applaud.”
The willingness of Thompson and Coler to face the political dangers that such a change entails is a measure of the seriousness with which they, like other officials around the country, are viewing the huge welfare caseloads that, in Illinois, cost taxpayers $1.1 billion a year.
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A major reason for the size of those caseloads has been the emergence of a black underclass in American cities which, from generation to generation, has been mired in a welfare culture where the work ethic was rarely taught.
Life in the underclass and its implications for the rest of society were recently detailed in an extensive Tribune series ”The American Millstone.”
The series played a role in the decision of state officials to develop the new public aid program, Thompson said.
”What The Tribune`s series pointed out is that people want a chance to be proud and independent, not society`s millstones,” Coler said.
The change in Illinois` public aid policy is embodied in a new program called Project Chance, which will involve little additional funding, just a reshuffling of some $30 million already in the public aid budget.
Funds among state agencies are reportedly scarce. The state`s budget director, Robert Mandeville, Thursday said all state agencies are being asked to trim spending because of short-term revenue problems.
Thompson said if Project Chance is successful the placement of 112,500 people in new jobs would save the state more than $40 million a month.
But making that policy change and reaching the ambitious goal won`t be easy.
For the new policy to work, state officials will have to convince welfare recipients to take part, convince caseworkers to help steer the recipients to the right training or schooling and convince employers to hire the newly trained workers.
To help this happen, an additional $3 million is being made available to businesses and groups that will train welfare recipients for specific jobs and guarantee that at least 65 percent will be placed in jobs when the training is done.
Already, over the last two years, the public aid department has been successful in increasing its job placements. Last year, 25,000 persons were placed in jobs, an increase from the 9,300 persons placed the year before. Meanwhile, the state`s welfare caseload dropped from 376,133 cases to 341,744. Social service officials applauded the new initiative but worried about its ultimate effectiveness.
Suzanne Strassberger, policy specialist for United Charities, questioned whether the state would be able to convince enough employers to take part in the program.
Jerry Stermer, supervisor of government relations for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, said, ”I`m extremely supportive of what Coler`s got here. Whether they get a job at the end of the process, Coler seemed to indicate that he won`t abandon them. If job A doesn`t come through, he`ll train them for job B.”
Earlier workfare programs in Illinois, although also mandatory, failed, Coler admitted, because they provided no job training or trained recipients for jobs that weren`t available.
Stermer, who is the former executive director of the Legislative Advisory Commission on Public Aid, said the mandatory program at one time consisted solely of having recipients carry around a form that employers had to sign to show that the recipient had asked for a job.
Nonetheless, Stermer said the plan failed to address two other major components of the welfare problem–the lack of jobs and the unwillingness of recipients to take many minimum-wage jobs.
”There`s got to be jobs,” Stermer said. ”There`s nothing in here that establishes new net jobs. This does not address that most real problem.”
Illinois had an unemployment rate in November of 9.7 percent, the largest of any industrial state. The fear that Stermer and others expressed is that, without new jobs, any reduction in the welfare caseload made through job placements will be offset by increases in new welfare cases of those who lose their jobs.