Posted on: Thursday, October 28, 2004

Welfare advocates want surplus used

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Human services advocates will gather at Hawai'i's Capitol today to urge Gov. Linda Lingle to spend unused federal block-grant dollars to provide greater welfare assistance, affordable housing and quality childcare for needy families.

The advocates want the state to use that surplus to increase the amount given to families. The typical welfare family of three in Hawai'i gets $570 a month, according to Debbie Shimizu, executive director of the local chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

That amount is based on a formula using federal poverty levels from 1993 and has not changed since then, Shimizu said. "It's just totally inadequate because you can't even pay the rent," she said.

The welfare advocates also want the state to use the accumulated funds to increase housing assistance for needy families and put more resources into childcare programs for the disadvantaged.

But Lillian Koller, Lingle's director of human services, said the state needs to have up to two years' worth of Temporary Assistance for Families expenditures stored away in anticipation of future program needs. The state receives about $98.9 million in federal TANF money annually.

The number of families receiving TANF funds has dropped dramatically in recent years, largely because of a 1998 law that prohibits a family from receiving welfare for more than five years, said June Shimokawa, a member of the Welfare and Employment Rights Coalition, which is sponsoring today's news conference.

"They're accumulating something like $30 million a year," Shimokawa said.

The Human Services Department provided numbers showing that while the number of recipients has declined, the amount of money being held at the end of year is not increasing.

Agency officials said they could not provide its "carryover" balance for the recently completed year because it hasn't finished accounting for the last federal fiscal year. But the agency provided an estimated ending balance of $51.8 million as of Oct. 1, 2004, less than the $57.5 million on Oct. 1, 2003, and $65.7 million on Oct. 1, 2002.

The agency said the number of TANF cases has declined from 14,364 in July 2000 to 8,877 this past July.

Koller, in response to the advocates' pleadings, said her agency is restricted from using reserve TANF dollars for anything but financial assistance programs. It's also critical for the state to have up to a two-year reserve on hand to meet welfare-related costs that are anticipated in the coming years, Koller said. She also pointed out that a Hawai'i-only waiver that allowed 3,000 TANF recipients to be unemployed because of hardships expired on Oct. 1, meaning the state will now have to spend money to place them into jobs. Koller also pointed out that the TANF program is up for reauthorization by Congress, making it uncertain how much the program will get in the future.

Patricia Murakami, administrator of DHS' Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division, said that the estimated $51.8 million is equal to about one year of actual financial assistance payments.

"It is not prudent for us as a state to go down the road of other states who have literally spent out all of their TANF monies," Koller said. "It is the right thing to do to reserve enough so that you weather the ups and downs in the economy and you can continue to provide on an on-demand basis the need for job support programs and employer incentives to help these people break out of dependency."

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.