BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 959
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   May 4, 2011

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

                    AB 959 (Jones) - As Amended:  April 12, 2011 

          Policy Committee:                              Human 
          ServicesVote:6 - 0 

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          Yes    Reimbursable:              Yes

           SUMMARY  

          This bill extends by one month the time in which county welfare 
          departments can restore CalWORKs benefits without requiring a 
          new application to recipients who are late in turning in their 
          CalWORKs quarterly reports.

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          1)To the extent this legislation allows counties to avoid 
            requiring recipients to reapply for benefits, it would result 
            in administrative savings in both the CalWORKs and CalFresh 
            programs.

          2)This bill is unclear as to whether or not "restoring" benefits 
            is intended to mean that recipients will be retroactively paid 
            for the time in which they failed to report. However, 
            requiring a discontinuance notice to be rescinded suggests 
            that is the intent of this legislation. Therefore, for every 
            1,000 recipients who submit their CalWORKs quarterly reports 
            one month late, it would cost $460,000 (TANF/GF).

          3)Federal law may prohibit states from retroactively paying 
            CalFresh (food stamps) recipients for benefits that they lost 
            during the time in which they did not report.  However, those 
            recipients would be eligible for transitional CalFresh 
            benefits and therefore should not see a reduction in their 
            benefits due to a failure to report by the first of the month.

           COMMENTS  

           1)Rationale  . This bill, sponsored by San Diego County, is 








                                                                  AB 959
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            intended to reduce the number of applications being processed 
            by the county by allowing them to by-pass the reapplication 
            process in cases where a recipient is late in filing the 
            required quarterly reports. Under this legislation, if a 
            recipient submits a complete quarterly report and all of the 
            required verifications before the last day of the month during 
            which it is due, the county is able to restore the benefits to 
            the household without requiring a new application or 
            interview. 

           2)Potential Amendments Needed  . The author should work with the 
            United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition 
            Services to determine whether or not the language contained in 
            this bill is allowable under federal law.  It may be that the 
            bill needs to be amended to clarify that retroactive payments 
            will be made for the CalWORKs program but not for the CalFresh 
            program. 

           3)Chaptering Problem  . AB 6 (Fuentes) repeals the section of the 
            code that this bill seeks to amend.  In addition, AB 1400 
            (Committee on Human Services) amends this code section. 
            Chaptering language will eventually be necessary in all three 
            bills.

           Analysis Prepared by  :    Julie Salley-Gray / APPR. / (916) 
          319-2081