State House News Service

Boston, March 3, 1999--In a rally on the State House steps this morning, welfare advocates called for extensions of the state's new two-year time limits on benefits, and more education and job training programs and child care subsidies. 

The group of about 50 advocates then marched to Gardner Auditorium, where the Committee on Human Services and Elderly Affairs heard testimony on numerous welfare-related bills. 

"We're here to ask the question - welfare to what?" said Ann Whitorn of the UMass Boston's Academic Working Group on Poverty.  "We're very concerned about what happens to people after they're cut off from welfare, and we're demanding they push the time limits back from two years to the five-year federal limit." 

Gov. Paul Cellucci strongly opposes any change in the time limit.  In fact, 
he recently filed a bill to further toughen work requirements for welfare 
recipients.  It raises the weekly work requirement from 20 to 30 hours for 
able-bodied parents with children over the age of 2. 

Reacting to Cellucci's proposal, Debbie Hoyt-Fraser - who has been on 
welfare since November 1995, when she was downsized out of a job at Blue Cross/Blue Shield - said, "Governor, who's at home who's been raising your children?"  She said she hit the time limit in December and her appeal for an extension was denied. 

The two-year limit is "unreasonable," and does not take into account the 
fact that "life happens," said Hoyt-Fraser, a single mother of three children under 13.  She said the father of her kids owes them $76,000 in child support, and she cannot get a job because she lacks reliable transportation due to an accident in which her car was totaled. 

The time limit "doesn't stop a child getting sick, or myself getting sick," she said.  "No matter how much money you make or how much education you have, life happens while you're making other plans.  We've got to be 
reasonable about this.  You're talking about human beings, not machines." 

Randy Albelda, an economics professor at UMass Boston who does research on low-wage women, said the state is slashing welfare rolls without any data about the impact.  According to "comprehensive studies" in 15 other states, one third of former recipients are slightly better off, one-third are about the same, and one-third are doing worse, Albelda said. 

"What we've done is we've created the working poor," she said.  "All the 
research shows that two years is just not enough time for women to do what they need to do." 

Before the Human Services Committee hearing, co-chairman Sen. Therese 
Murray (D-Plymouth) said she does not support the bill that proposes to 
adopt the five-year federal standard (S 642).  Even if the committee 
recommends it, the bill faces a "hard road" in the House and Senate. 

The problem, Murray said, is that the federal law allows only five years in 
a lifetime, whereas the Massachusetts law, which she described as "much 
more liberal," allows people to go on and off welfare "a number of times 
after the initial five years is up." 

"So the clock ticks," she said. "If we give five years of services and 
keep people on for five years, we can't provide them after that fifth year 
with anything, any services.  That would be very difficult, because then we 
would be told, well the state's going to have to step in and pick up these 
services, and we won't have the money to do it. " 

Co-chairman Rep. Michael Cahill (D-Beverly) said the agenda is focused on beefing up support services for people leaving the welfare rolls, rather 
than on extending the time limits. 

"I think there are many things that we're trying to do - try to better define the extension policy, try to look again at education and training, try to make sure we do the best job we can in spending federal welfare-to-work dollars," he said.  "Particularly, we're looking at how to do child care to make sure that's all in place, and transportation.  I think those are among our priorities right now and we continue to work on those." 

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino warned the committee, "Massachusetts is sliding back into the Dark Ages."  He said Massachusetts is one of the only states that does not allow job training to count toward work requirements, which he described as "crazy." 
 
In Boston, 60 percent of welfare recipients have no high school credentials, 60 percent have never worked or their last jobs were over five years ago, and 20 percent have a language barrier that prevents mainstream employment, Menino said. 

"There is no way to move up and out of poverty without job training," he 
said, drawing cheers.  "Education and training for welfare recipients is good common sense, and good for the bottom line."

The mayor testified in support of three bills he recently filed.  One would 
count job training programs toward work and community service requirements (H 2528).  Another would grant benefit extensions to people enrolled in training programs with job placement components (H 2359), and the third would distribute job training funds where the need is greatest (H 2530). 

Amparo Ortiz, a former welfare recipient who is now the senior secretary at Boston University's medical school campus, said that before receiving job 
training, she stayed at home with her infant daughter and "worried about not being able to provide her with a good future." 

One year later, Ortiz said she has a good job where she's already received 
a promotion and a raise, as well as her own apartment and a car.  "What a 
difference a year makes," she said. "I feel like I can offer a better future for my daughter and myself." 
 

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