District, 3 States Seek Federal Exemptions From New Welfare Requirements

The District of Columbia and three states have filed requests to exempt their jurisdictions from some of the tough new terms of the comprehensive welfare legislation awaiting President Clinton's signature.

The District, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada seek waivers of current federal welfare law that would enable them to escape some of the detailed new requirements in the bill that passed Congress last Thursday.

For two years, Republican governors such as John Engler of Michigan have complained of having to get federal permission to implement changes approved by their state legislatures.

Now some states are working with the Department of Health and Human Services to use waivers to give themselves more flexibility than the new legislation allows.

States that already have approved waivers when President Clinton signs the bill, perhaps in two weeks, can follow their own rules where they differ from the legislation. States without them must follow the strict new law to the letter, and future waiver approval will be sharply limited. Officials at HHS have told states they would expedite approval.

The District requested permission to:

Exempt welfare families from the absolute cutoff of benefits after five years if they have followed all the rules and, through no fault of their own, have been unable to get a job that pays more than their welfare benefits.

Require parents with children older than one year to engage in "work activities" but to define such activities liberally to include education, job-readiness or job-skills training as well as efforts to look for jobs.

Require teenage mothers to attend school and live with an adult unless the teenager has good cause not to.

Increase the amount of earnings that welfare recipients can keep while receiving assistance and increase from $1,500 to $4,550 the value of a car that a person can own without being disqualified from aid.

Last year, the D.C. Council passed legislation altering the District's welfare laws but failed to file a technical waiver request because of administrative and financial difficulties. Forty-three states already have federal welfare waivers allowing a variety of experimental changes in welfare rules.

The three states and the District are trying to get their waivers in under the wire by winning "fast track" approval for changes that HHS has granted other jurisdictions.

"If somebody is gaming the system, we obviously have to be on watch," said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), one of the authors of the legislation. "But I don't think it is realistic to think that HHS will approve the waivers before the president signs the bill."

Shaw said Wisconsin asked for a waiver in May, and the president still has not signed it. More than 14 other states also have waiver requests pending, some for as long as two years.

Mark Greenberg, chief counsel for the Center for Law and Social Policy, said the District and the three states "are seeking to be treated the same as the others with waivers, and there is not something illegitimate about it."

"The irony is that states seem to be now recognizing that this bill does not provide the flexibility that was promised," he said.

Congress, in turning over responsibility for welfare to the states, tried to make sure states would be tough on work and strict about making sure welfare was not a lifetime proposition.

States that have waivers can continue to operate under the terms and conditions of their waivers until they expire, usually in five years. Many waivers, however, affect only part of a state, or only one small element of a state's welfare plan. Regardless of their waivers, states will get a lump-sum payment each year, which generally will be frozen for five years.

States can be penalized if they fail to meet requirements that 25 percent of all adult welfare recipients be engaged in work activities next year. Work activities are defined strictly in the bill. Vocational training can last for only 12 months, and individuals are allowed to spend no more than six weeks looking for jobs or receiving "job readiness assistance."

In some states, most recipients participating in work activities are attending school.