RC Blog

Gregoire signs General Assistance reform bill, 3,600 people to be cut

posted by Cydney Gillis on Tuesday, March 30 at 9:16am

It’s been a long, hard road, but Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a bill yesterday put forward by Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), chair of the House’s Human Services Committee, that keeps the state’s primary safety-net program for those who are disabled and cannot work—General Assistance-Unemployable—largely intact and gives it a new name people can understand: Disability Lifeline.

The press release sent out on the signing by the House Democratic Caucus, however, notes that an estimated 3,600 people could lose benefits on Sept. 1 as a result of a temporary two-year benefit limit that Dickerson compromised on with the Senate and the governor to save the program. And it says another 1,100 people could be dropped by June 2011. That’s out of about 18,000 people on the program today, according to one GAU manager—the press release says 17,000.

Using the latter number, one third of all Disability Lifeline recipients could be cut. But Dickerson also wrote into the bill that the Department of Social and Health Services must review the cases of all recipients facing cutoff and move anyone who is eligible for federal disability benefits (Supplemental Security Income) into a related but separate program, now to be called Disability Lifeline-Expedited, that will continue paying them benefits while they wait for SSI.

OLYMPIA—Landmark reforms that aim to preserve and improve large parts of the human-services safety net in Washington were signed into law today by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

The reforms will save the state an estimated $25 million this biennium, according to Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, the lead sponsor of the measure signed today.

“The Security Lifeline reforms signed today will not only preserve essential parts of our safety net for low-income residents and people with disabilities, they will make some services more efficient and cost-effective than ever before,” Dickerson said.

The signing of the bill (House Bill 2782) was a huge victory for Dickerson, Speaker Frank Chopp and House Democrats, who fought to reform the safety net and save medical and income assistance for people who are unable to work because of physical or mental disabilities.

“We knew we had to reform the safety net to save it, and we did,” Dickerson said.

One Security Lifeline reform launches a public-private partnership to create a network of on-line “Opportunity Portals” in local communities. These high-tech portals will help Washingtonians gain access to federal, state and local services they are eligible to receive but are not getting.

Leading philanthropies have agreed to pay the start-up costs of the portals, which could bring hundreds of millions of additional federal dollars into Washington. For example, the portals could help low-income workers access more of the $140 to $170 million in federal Earned Income Tax Credits that are going unclaimed in Washington.

A second reform aims to expand the Basic Food Employment and Training program to three additional community colleges. The program currently serves about 2,000 participants in 12 community colleges in Washington.

The most talked-about reform in the new law will revamp the state general assistance program (GA-U) that currently helps about 17,000 people who are unable to work due to disabilities.

The reformed program, dubbed the “Disability Lifeline,” has time limits and emphasizes faster transitions to employability or federally-funded Social Security Income (SSI) benefits.

Under the new reforms, Disability Lifeline recipients must participate in substance-abuse treatment or vocational rehabilitation, when appropriate. They will also have to accept housing vouchers in lieu of cash grants, when suitable housing is available. Expedited case reviews will hasten transitions to employability or SSI.

The time limits in the Disability Lifeline reforms—benefits are limited to 24 months in a 5-year period—begin Sept. 1 and will be retroactive.  An estimated 3,600 people could lose benefits when the time limits kick in.  A total of 4,700 recipients could lose benefits by June 2011.

“I think the time limits are too short, but we couldn’t have saved the program without them,” Dickerson said.

House Republicans on the Ways & Means Committee had proposed to terminate the entire program—including medical assistance—on July 1.

“Ending the program altogether would have been a recipe for disaster,” said Dickerson. “More than a third of recipients have severe mental illnesses. Can you imagine the public-safety risks of taking away not only their income but also the medicines they need for their illness?”

In December, Gov. Gregoire had warned that the GA-U program could be eliminated if no new revenues were found to ease the state budget deficit. She later proposed continuing medical benefits but sharply limiting the cash grants, which currently average a little over $300 monthly.

According to Dickerson, about of a third of the people currently on the Disability Lifeline are homeless. Most of the rest are near-homeless.

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Comments

you could save the program by doing a fingerprint of all the hispanic people here in Kennewick who have more then 1 ID and cont to comitte fraud by having more then 1 foodstamp card . I work as a cashier and I see people at the 1st of each month pulling out 5 cards and getting up to 100.00 off each card but when you complain in the local office its has hispanic people working there and they just smile at you and say thats not possible when I ask them if they could prove its not being done they just laugh at you becuase they know its true,look at what happened to the housing dept in Richland..

patty | submitted on 03/30/2010, 7:44pm

People are defrauding the system to buy FOOD?  And brown people, no less!  OMG!

sheri | submitted on 03/31/2010, 9:27am

Receiving state medical coupons qualifies you for food stamps. Seattle and King County governments should be concerned about the increased use of resources when GAU recipients are dropped, including Harborview, jails, shelters, food banks, community clinics and mental health facilities. If 40% of those folks are from King County, that’s 1,500 people without medical coupons, about 600 of them with mental health diagnoses but with no access to meds, come September. Many will be unlikely to retain their housing and will soon become homeless. In addition, permanent and transitional housing programs that collect one-third of their checks for rent will find a hole in their income.Municipalities and agencies need to plan now to track the impact of the cuts to GAU on their budgets.

A requirement for drug treatment is fine, but has anyone seen any extra treatment slots? Outpatient treatment is ineffective for homeless populations, and residential treatment beds for 60 - 90 days are in extremely short supply. What happens when a GAU recipient relapses? How many tries do they get? Hardly anyone gets sober in one try.

Sarajane Siegfriedt | submitted on 03/31/2010, 3:10pm

I believe in fairness.  i think that if people are using more than one card as the woman reports, it should be looked into by people who are not biased one way or the other.
I tell people who are unfair “you would have to repeat my kindergarten class” if they display uncaring actions.
There are so many uncared for, hungry in our area that I only want fairness to be part of our State and the money that is distributed.
We can build buildings, highways, fancy walls, I believe we can really use our creative minds to find ways to house and feed our poor and mentally ill.

carolyn hale | submitted on 03/31/2010, 8:56pm

The budget cuts are being felt in the medical arena as diabetes supplies are being decreased to patch a hole in the State budget.

Poor, young, elderly, severely mentally ill do not vote why don’t those who do effectuate change in government.

Finger printing minorities or anyone else for that matter is a violation of their privacy rights.

The welfare system is overloaded and people who break the law make it hard on those who obey by committing fraud on the Welfare System.

Debra Braxton | submitted on 05/10/2010, 1:21pm

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