BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE HUMAN
SERVICES COMMITTEE
Senator S. Joseph Simitian, Chair
BILL NO: SB 786
S
AUTHOR: McCLINTOCK
B
VERSION: As Introduced February 22, 2005
HEARING DATE: April 12, 2005
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FISCAL: Public Safety; Appropriations
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CONSULTANT:
Sue North
SUBJECT
Requiring Home Visits by District Attorney Investigators
for All Welfare Applicants
SUMMARY
SB 786 would establish a statewide requirement for all
welfare applicants to participate in a home visit from a
District Attorney's Office investigator within 10 days of
application.
ABSTRACT
Current law requires welfare applicants to both fill out
required paperwork but also comply with various methods of
verifying facts related to their application.
This bill would in all TANF applications require a home
visit be conducted by an investigator of the local District
Attorney's office within 10 days of application.
FISCAL IMPACT
As a mandate this bill would fall under the provisions of
state mandated claims for all local costs associated with
Continued---
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its implementation on an on-going basis. According to the
Department of Social Services (DSS) when the state funded
specific early fraud prevention efforts in 2000-2001, it
cost the state $7 million per year, or $108,000 per
District Attorney Investigator. That program did not
envision home visits to all applicants, only those where
the verification documents were inconclusive or
contradictory. There were 450,000 applicants for TANF
assistance during 2004.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Home visits have been and continue to be appropriately part
of social work duties when working with families in need.
Indeed, whenever welfare fraud is suspected based upon a
given case, referrals to the fraud investigators in the
local District Attorney's Office is the established
protocol. This bill, however, would establish a wholly
different standard by requiring law enforcement
investigators to conduct home visits of all applicants for
public assistance within 10 days of such application.
Historical Framework
In the early 1970s then President Nixon sponsored a welfare
reform package which separated income maintenance from
social services, ended the prohibition against men living
in a welfare household as a condition of eligibility under
then AFDC (now TANF), and federalized the old aid programs
which provided the support for the aged, blind and disabled
into one SSI program.
As a result county eligibility workers (rather than social
workers) became the primary intake workers to determine
welfare eligibility. The 'proof' of eligibility still
entails the same types of information: rent receipts, bank
statements, utility bills, proof of residency,
determination of ineligibility in other programs such as
Unemployment Insurance, Workers' Compensation, etc.
Prior to the Nixon welfare reforms intake of applications
for welfare included some method to verify that a welfare
parent did not have a second adult (usually this meant
welfare mother not having a man in the house) who could
serve as the 'breadwinner' in the household. In fact
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poverty itself was then not enough to qualify for welfare
-family deprivation was defined as poverty plus no second
parent able to work to provide for the children's needs.
Then welfare departments in the mid to late 1960s conducted
home visits to "catch" the existence of a second adult in
the household. During one such initiative in Alameda
County a social worker, Benny Parrish, objected to being
required to conduct these family searches which, by
definition, were not being done in cases of suspected fraud
but were part of the eligibility determination process.
In a landmark case on this subject, Benny Max Parrish v.
The Civil Service Commission of the County of Alameda (425
P.2d 223 --Cal. 1997), the California Supreme Court ruled
against the practice envisioned in this bill: namely, they
ruled against the constitutionality of targeting home
visits for those welfare applicants not suspected of fraud.
In that case the court went so far as to argue that the
unequal nature of the power held by those consenting to a
home visit and those asking for access is such that consent
to a legal search cannot be obtained.
The similarities between the circumstances in the Parrish
case and this proposal are that the homes identified for
visits are not under suspicion of welfare fraud, that
refusal to allow entry does cause the welfare case to
trigger to a sanction, denial, penalty, etc. In fact in
the protocol envisioned in SB 786 requires law enforcement
officials (in this case District Attorney Office
investigators), not welfare department social workers, to
conduct these interviews-a fact which even more profoundly
affects the ability of any welfare applicant to exercise
their constitutional right to refuse to participate.
The impact of the questions raised from the Parrish case
still influences state welfare policy, notwithstanding the
fact that there have been additional welfare reforms since
the Nixon era. The current regulations of the California
Department of Social Services prohibit "mass or
indiscriminate home visits" by fraud investigators. In
this case, these are applicants by design NOT suspected of
fraud.
The author argues that Project 100%, the San Diego project
which serves as the prototype for this bill, "recognizes
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that the efforts of Project 100% assure that public
assistance benefits are awarded to those who legitimately
require and are legally qualified to receive public
assistance." He further argues that Project 100% has saved
taxpayers well over $4 million in three years and found a
fraud rate of about 25%.
Opponents argue that this bill would be very costly to
implement and that the specific approach used in SB 786 is
one model of many that local counties use to detect fraud.
A recent home visit program in Los Angeles, as an example,
concluded a fraud rate of 6%.
Comments:
1. What specific pieces of evidence are gathered which
can only be gathered by a home visit? What unique
purpose is served by the home visit?
2. How do eligibility workers verify applications
today without these home visits?
3. Requests for further documentation from the
author's sponsors was not forthcoming due to their
concerns about pending litigation. If there is a
court case pending on the legality of this project,
should the state enact a statewide mandate to do the
same?
POSITIONS
Support: San Bernardino County Safety Employees'
Benefit Association
San Diego County Office of the District
Attorney
California District Attorneys Association
Oppose: California Catholic Conference
California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative
California State Association of Counties
County Welfare Directors Association of
California
Western Center on Law and Poverty
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