BILL ANALYSIS Ó SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES Senator McGuire, Chair 2015 - 2016 Regular Bill No: SB 23 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Author: |Mitchell | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |----------+-----------------------+-----------+-----------------| |Version: |December 1, 2014 |Hearing |March 24, 2015 | | | |Date: | | |----------+-----------------------+-----------+-----------------| |Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes | ---------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Consultant|Mareva Brown | |: | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: CalWORKs: eligibility SUMMARY This bill would repeal the state's Maximum Family Grant rule, which prohibits aid to a child born into a family receiving CalWORKs benefits if the child was conceived after the family began receiving aid. It would prohibit the denial of aid for that child, and would expressly prohibit the state from requiring an applicant or recipient to disclose whether they were a victim of incest or rape, their method of contraception or whether a family used contraception, as specified. ABSTRACT Existing law: 1) Establishes the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which permits states to implement the program under a state plan. (42 USC § 601 et seq.) 2) Establishes in state law the CalWORKs program to provide cash assistance and other social services for low-income families through the TANF program. Under CalWORKs, each county provides assistance through a combination of state, county and federal TANF funds. (WIC 10530) 3) Establishes guidelines for determining a family's maximum SB 23 (Mitchell) PageB of? aid payment, including all eligible family members, as well as the level of aid to be paid, as specified. (WIC 11450) 4) Prohibits an increase in aid based on an increase in the number of needy persons in a family due to the birth of an additional child, if the family has received aid continuously for the 10 months prior to the birth of the child, as specified. (WIC 11450.04 (a)) 5) Exempts this prohibition in the following circumstances: a. Any child who was conceived as a result of an act of rape, as defined in Sections 261 and 262 of the Penal Code, if the rape was reported to a law enforcement agency, medical or mental health professional or social services agency prior to, or within three months after, the birth of the child. b. Any child who was conceived as a result of an incestuous relationship if the relationship was reported to a medical or mental health professional or a law enforcement agency or social services agency prior to, or within three months after, the birth of the child or if paternity has been established. c. Any child who was conceived as a result of contraceptive failure if the parent was using an intrauterine device, a Norplant, or the sterilization of either parent. d. If the family does not receive aid for two consecutive months during the 10-months prior to the child's birth. e. Children born on or before November 1, 1995. f. Any child who would qualify for the maximum family grant cap if the family did not receive aid for 24 consecutive months while the child was living with the family. g. Any child conceived when either parent was a non-needy caretaker relative. SB 23 (Mitchell) PageC of? h. Any child who is no longer living in the same home with either parent. (WIC 11450.04 (b) et seq.) 6) Requires 100 percent of any child support payment received for a child who is born under the maximum family grant (MFG) cap - and therefore is not the recipient of aid - to be paid to the family. Additionally, prohibits any such child support payment from being counted as income in calculating CalWORKs benefits. (WIC 11450.04 (e)) 7) Requires each county welfare department to notify recipients of the MFG provisions in writing at the time of application and recertification, as specified. (WIC 11450.04 (f)) 8) Requires the state Department of Social Services (CDSS) to seek appropriate federal waivers to implement the MFG limit and associated conditions, as specified, and directs DSS to implement the rule on the date the waiver is received by declaration of the department's director. (WIC 11450.04 (g)) This bill: 1) Makes legislative findings and declarations that: a. Scientific research has demonstrated that young children living in deep poverty experience lifelong cognitive impairments limiting their ability to be prepared for and succeed in school. b. Academic research has documented an increase in missed days of school and in visits to hospital emergency rooms by children who live in deep poverty. c. The Maximum Family Grant (MFG) rule was adopted to limit the amount of time a family could receive assistance and to limit the amount of assistance received. The rule was passed before implementation of welfare reform. At the time the rule was adopted, there was no limit on the length of time a family could receive aid, no work requirements and the benefits provided were approximately 80 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). SB 23 (Mitchell) PageD of? d. Since the rule's implementation, lifetime limits on aid and work requirements have been enacted in order to receive a maximum benefit of approximately 40 percent of the FPL. e. The Maximum Family Grant rule makes poor children poorer, reducing the income of families with infants to less than 30 percent of the FPL. f. This legislation is necessary to protect infants born to families receiving CalWORKs from experiencing lifelong cognitive impairments due to the toxic stress of deep poverty and to ready those children for participation in California's public school system. g. This legislation is necessary to protect the reproductive and privacy rights of all applicants for, and recipients of, aid under the CalWORKs program. 2) Prohibits an applicant for, or recipient of, CalWORKs aid from being required as a condition of eligibility to do any of the following: a. Divulge that any member of the assistance unit is a victim of rape or incest. b. Share confidential medical records related to any member of the assistance unit's rape or incest. c. Use contraception, choose a particular method of contraception, or divulge the method of contraception that any member of the assistance unit uses. 3) Prohibits an applicant for or recipient of CalWORKs benefits from being denied aid, or denied an increase in the maximum aid payment, for a child born into the family during a period in which the family is receiving aid. 4) Specifies that no increased benefit will be paid for any month prior to January 1, 2016, as a result of repealing the prior statute. SB 23 (Mitchell) PageE of? 5) Repeals WIC 11450.04 which establishes and defines the MFG rule, including exclusions for families in which a mother reports she is a victim of rape or incest or in instances where specified methods of contraception fail. 6) Prohibits appropriation pursuant to WIC 15200 be made for the purposes of this act. FISCAL IMPACT This bill has not been analyzed by a fiscal committee, however a Senate Appropriation Committee analysis of SB 899 in 2014, which had identical language, estimated there would be major first year increase in CalWORKs grant costs of about $205 million (General Fund) based on data from county consortia indicating 13.33 percent of all children in CalWORKs households (131,400 children) were impacted by the MFG rule. The analysis noted that future costs for existing cases could increase by five percent per year ($10 million increase after the first year). It also estimated potential future costs of $3.9 million to $7.8 million (General Fund) for every 2,500 to 5,000 children born into CalWORKs families each year who otherwise would have been subject to the MFG rule, with annual costs cumulatively increasing in subsequent years as well as other relatively minor costs for automation and offsets for child support payment increases and averted administrative hearings. BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION Purpose of the bill: The author states that as a result of California's MFG policy, women are forced to make decisions about the types of birth control they can use if they are receiving public benefits. Women who are raped are required to report that sensitive and highly personal fact to their welfare caseworker in order for their babies to receive aid. Some families chose to refuse assistance (and become very poor) for the last three months of a pregnancy rather than lose the grant for the new baby - which is less than $200 a month - but will help pay for diapers and wipes, according to the author. According to the author, in some extreme cases, women will refuse a doctor's advice about when she should deliver her baby in order to stay off aid for a full SB 23 (Mitchell) PageF of? two months during her pregnancy, which would allow her to avoid the grant cap. The author states that this kind of desperation is unconscionable to force upon poor women - especially considering the fact that the maximum grant is just enough to put a family at about 40 percent of the federal poverty line. Poverty and CalWORKs California has the highest poverty rate in the nation - just under one-quarter of residents are living at or below the federal poverty level (FPL), meaning they earn no more than $20,090 per year for a family of three. During and after the Great Recession, California saw growing rates of deep childhood poverty - those living below 50 percent of the federal poverty line. One of California's most essential anti-poverty strategies is the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program (CalWORKs), which provides cash assistance to approximately 540,000 families - including more than 1 million children, according to 2014 federal data. Federal funding for CalWORKs comes from the TANF block grant. Currently, a grant to a family of three in a high-cost California county is $670 per month but that will increase to $704 per month in April 2015. The current grant level is 40 percent of the federal poverty threshold (FPL), compared with 81 percent of FPL in 1989 and 55 percent in 1997. In the past five years, California's CalWORKs benefit has undergone significant grant cuts, the elimination of a Cost of Living Adjustment, and a radical restructuring of the Welfare to Work activities, requirements and time limits. Adults in the program have gone from a 60-month lifetime limit on CalWORKs aid to a 48-month limit, with strict requirements on work participation to remain in the program after 24 months. Maximum Family Grant rule In 1992, against the backdrop of a debate about whether "intergenerational welfare" was encouraging women to avoid work and have additional children, New Jersey passed the nation's first statewide family cap policy. The policy prohibited additional benefits from being provided to a family for children born after the family began receiving welfare benefits. The SB 23 (Mitchell) PageG of? policy, which was soon copied by other states, came amid a national conversation that would become the basis for the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which established a 60-month time-limit on benefits in most cases, and emphasized integrating parents into the workforce as part of the program. Prior to the passage of PRWORA, states needed waivers to implement family cap policies, which required rigorous evaluations of whether the policies achieved their intended goals. AB 473 (Brulte, Chapter 196, Statutes of 1994) created California's maximum family grant (MFG) rule as part of budget trailer bill, and required California to obtain a federal waiver to be able to implement the new MFG rule, as the rule was inconsistent with existing federal regulations. California's waiver application was approved in August of 1996, however waiver approval coincided with the passage of PRWORA, which granted states flexibility to implement their own policies without need for a waiver, and California proceeded with the MFG policy without implementing the waiver. California's MFG policy has not been amended since its original enactment. The MFG legislation was based on the belief that increasing welfare grants for children born into AFDC families may incentivize families to have additional children for the explicit purpose of increasing their monthly grant. By limiting the grant amount, policymakers argued that families would be dissuaded from having additional children. In a heated floor debate in July 1994, in which the bill's author argued that the MFG would "encourage the transition to self-sufficiency," then-Assemblyman John Burton questioned whether this move would achieve the intended goal. "Welfare reform is getting people off of welfare and into a productive role in society with a job, not starving some kid who happens to be born into a family that is on AFDC," Burton argued. Today, CDSS estimates about 134,900 children per month are subject to the MFG rule. According to a 2013 CDSS sampling of cases, approximately 58 percent of MFG children are under age 6. For a family with an MFG child, the loss in grant in 2015 is between $116 and $136 per month, according to CDSS data. SB 23 (Mitchell) PageH of? How the MFG rule works California's MFG rule prohibits CalWORKs aid payments, with certain exceptions, for a child that is born into a family that has been receiving aid for 10 or more continuous months, or for longer than the gestational period of the new baby. If the family is not receiving aid for two or more months during the 10-month period preceding the birth of the child, the new child becomes eligible for aid in the CalWORKs benefit calculation. Additionally, the MFG rule does not apply if a family returns to aid after a break of two or more years during which the family did not receive any aid, provided that the family still meets eligibility requirements and aided children are still under 18 years old. Exceptions to the MFG rule California's statute permits exceptions to the MFG rule for incidents in which a child was born as a result of rape or incest, as long as the mother of the child can document that she reported the crime to law enforcement or a mental health professional or social services agency. The report must have been made prior to the child's birth or within three months after the child was born. Similarly, state law permits an exception to the MFG rule if the child is born as a result of the failure of one of three types of contraceptives specified in statute: An intrauterine device, Norplant (which was discontinued for use in the United States in 2002 amid questions about its effectiveness and lawsuits over its side-effects), SB 23 (Mitchell) PageI of? Sterilization of either parent. Other states Beginning in the early 1990s, 24 states implemented family cap rules. Today, just 16 states still have family cap rules in place, including California. In 2002 and 2003, Maryland and Illinois repealed their policies and were followed by Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas and Maryland.<1> Effect on fertility rates A number of research studies on the effects of the family cap across the country have concluded that the cap had little to no effect on fertility rates.<2> However, the U.S. General Accounting Office noted in its 2001 examination of the issue that most states implemented family caps as part of their welfare reforms designed to provide incentives for women to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births and to encourage self-sufficiency. Specifically, the study noted that "Due to limitations of the existing research, we cannot conclude that family cap policies reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births, affect the number of abortions, or change the size of the TANF caseload." It cited a number of methodological limitations. It did note, however, that the family cap was effective in reducing the amount that states were paying to families who qualified for benefits.<3> Effects of deep poverty on children Numerous studies have correlated the effects of deep childhood --------------------------- <1> Welfare Rules Database, Urban Institute and "Bringing Families out of Cap'tivity: The Need to Repeal the CalWORKs Maximum Family Grant Rule," UC Berkeley School of Law, April 2013 <2> Dyer, Wendy and Robert W. Fairlie, "Do Family Caps Reduce Out-of-Wedlock Births?" Economic Growth Center, Yale University, December 2003. <3> U.S. General Accounting Office, "More Research Needed on TANF Family Caps and Other Policies for Reducing Out-of-Wedlock Births," September 2001, p 2-3. SB 23 (Mitchell) PageJ of? poverty with poor health and outcomes including low birth weight, lead poisoning, child mortality and hospitalization. Other studies have drawn correlations between deep poverty and repeating a grade, being a high school dropout and having a learning disability. A 2011 article in the journal Developmental Psychology<4> estimated that a $1,000 increase in annual income - less than $100 per month -- increases young children's achievement by 5 to 6 percent of a standard deviation. In 2000, researchers noted in the journal Child Development that family caps and sanctions appear to disproportionately affect families with very young children who are most susceptible to adverse effects of deep poverty and recommended policy considerations focus on avoiding fiscal sanctions to those families. "Recent research suggests that economic deprivation is most harmful to a child's chances for achievement when it occurs early in the child's life. Economic logic suggests that policies aimed at preventing either economic deprivation itself or its effects are likely to constitute profitable social investments in the twenty-first century." <5> Related legislation SB 899 (Mitchel 2014) was identical to this bill. It was held in the Senate Appropriations committee. AB 271 (Mitchell, 2013) was substantially similar to this bill. It was held in the Senate Appropriations committee. AB 22 (Lieber, 2007) was substantially similar to this bill. It was held in the Assembly Appropriations committee. AB 473 (Brulte, Chapter 196, Statutes of 1994) created California's maximum family grant (MFG) rule and required California to obtain a federal waiver to implement it. --------------------------- <4> Duncan, Greg, et al, "Does Money Really Matter? Estimating Impacts of Family Income on Young Children's Achievement With Data From Random-Assignment Experiments," Developmental Psychology, 2011, Vol. 47, No. 5, 1263-1279 <5> Ibid SB 23 (Mitchell) PageK of? POSITIONS Support: CWDA (Co-Sponsor) UDW/AFSCME Local 3930 (Co-Sponsor Western Center on Law and Poverty (Co-Sponsor) ACT for Women and Girls ACCESS Women's Health Justice Alameda County Board of Supervisors Alameda County Food Bank Alliance for Community Transformations American Association of University Women American Civil Liberties Union of California Asian Law Alliance Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council Association of California Commissions for Women (ACCW) Bay Area Legal Aid Black Women for Wellness Business and Professional Women of Nevada County California Association of Food Banks California Black Health Network California Catholic Conference California Communities United Institute California Community College CalWORKs Association California Family Health Council California Food Policy Advocates California Hunger Action Coalition California Immigrant Policy Center California Labor Federation California Latinas for Reproductive Justice California National Organization for Women California Nurse - Midwives Association California Pan-Ethnic Health Network California Partnership California Reinvestment Coalition Californians United for a Responsible Budget California WIC Association California Women's Law Center Cal-Islanders Humanitarian Association Casa de Esperanza Center for Law and Social Policy SB 23 (Mitchell) PageL of? Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law Child Care Law Center Children Now Children's Defense Fund - California Chinese Progressive Association Citizens for Choice County of Los Angeles Courage Campaign Department on the Status of Women East Bay Community Law Center Feminist Democrats of Sacramento County Forward Together Friends Committee on Legislation of California Guam Communications Network Having Our Say Help a Mother Out Housing California Interface Children & Family Services Jewish Family Service of San Diego John Burton Foundation Korean Community Center of the East Bay Law Students for Reproductive Justice League of Women Voters of California Legal Aid Society - Employment Law Center Libreria Del Pueblo, Inc. LIUNA Locals 777 & 792 Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Lutheran Office of Public Policy March of Dimes Foundation, California Chapter Monterey County NARAL Pro-Choice California National Center for Youth Law National Council of Jewish Women California National Health Law Program National Women's Political Caucus of California 9 to 5 California Parent Voices' Partnership to End Domestic Violence Pacific Islander Cancer Survivors Network Peace Over Violence Physicians for Reproductive Health Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California Public Counsel's Children's Right Project and Homelessness SB 23 (Mitchell) PageM of? Prevention Law Projects Public Interest Law Project Rainbow Services, Ltd. San Francisco Living Wage Coalition SAVE SEIU Local 721 Sonoma County Human Services Department Special Needs Network, Inc. Starting Over, Inc. Strong Hearted Native Women's Coalition Tehama County Department of Social Services United Ways of California Ventura County Board of Supervisors Western Regional Advocacy Project Women's Health Specialist of California YWCA of Glendale (Two individuals) Oppose: None. -- END --