BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 271
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Date of Hearing: April 17, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mike Gatto, Chair
AB 271 (Mitchell) - As Amended: April 10, 2013
Policy Committee: Human
ServicesVote:5 - 1
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY
This bill repeals the exclusion of any children born into a
family more than 10 months after the family begins receiving
CalWORKs benefits when calculating the family's grant amount and
expressly prohibits the denial of aid, or denial of an increase
in the maximum aid payment, as a result of the birth of a child.
In addition, this bill prohibits a county from requiring any of
the following information as a condition of CalWORKs
eligibility:
1)Status as a victim of rape or incest.
2)Confidential medical records related to any member's rape or
incest.
3)The use of contraception or the particular method of
contraception.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Data suggests that between 5% and 14% of the children on the
current CalWORKs caseload are subject to the Maximum Family
Grant (MFG) rule and are therefore ineligible to receive aid.
Under this legislation, parents would now receive an increased
grant to cover those children.
There are currently over 1 million children in CalWORKs
families. Thus between 50,000 and 150,000 would become
eligible for aid. The cost for including those children in the
grant calculation would be between $80 million and $224
million (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
AB 271
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[TANF]/Maintenance of Effort [MOE]) per year.
2)Assuming that between 5,000 and 10,000 additional ineligible
children are born into CalWORKs families each year, those
children would cost an additional $7 million to $15 million
(TANF/MOE) the first year. That amount would double in the
second year and continue to grow as more children are added to
existing caseloads.
3)Because the current language in the bill simply removes the
provision that makes children born while a family is on
CalWORKs ineligible and explicitly prohibits the denial of aid
to children born while a family is receiving CalWORKs, it is
unclear whether or not a back payment of aid would be required
to those families that had been denied aid for their children.
If it is determined that payment of aid is due to those
families, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars
(TANF/MOE).
COMMENTS
1)Rationale . According to supporters of the bill, this bill is
designed to improve the quality of life for those CalWORKs
families with children that have been negatively impacted by
the MFG rule. By increasing their grant by about $122 per
month, the author's office hopes to improve the outcomes for
those families, or at a minimum, not further disadvantage
those families.
The author notes that given recent cuts to CalWORKs grants,
the purchasing power is less than half of what it was in 1987.
Therefore, even with this modest increase for families that
have had additional children, families will likely not be able
to afford the basic necessities. She argues that this current
policy exacerbates poverty by controlling impoverished
parents' choices about the sizes of their families and
dictating when to conceive through the threat of further
economic hardship.
The author further notes that California is one of 15 states
that maintains an MFG policy and that several states have
recently repealed the family cap, recognizing that it does not
serve its stated purpose and instead makes infants vulnerable
to the long-term consequences of poverty.
AB 271
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2)Background . The effect of the MFG is to freeze a family's
benefit when a child is born, forcing the family to subsist on
the same cash income despite the increasing needs of the
newborn. A mother of one child who gives birth continues to
receive a maximum of $516 per month rather than the maximum of
$638 otherwise payable for a family of three, a loss of $122
per month. There is no MFG in the food stamp program, so the
family's food stamp allotment would increase with the added
member, and the newborn is categorically eligible for
Medi-Cal. The infant and mother would also be eligible for
nutrition support from the federal Women, Infants and Children
(WIC) program.
Additionally, state law provides that child support collected
on behalf of an excluded child be paid entirely to the family,
rather than to the state or county as reimbursement for public
assistance, and not be considered income for purposes of
public benefit calculations.
The current MFG rule was adopted as part of the 1994-95 state
budget agreement (AB 473 (Brulte), Chapter 196, Statutes of
1994). It has not been amended since its original enactment.
The original legislation was based on the belief that
increasing welfare grants for children born into AFDC families
may provide an incentive for families to have additional
children to increase their monthly grant. By limiting the
grant amount, policy makers believed families would be
dissuaded from having additional children and therefore reduce
the amount of "intergenerational" poverty. More recent
studies have since debunked the belief that increasing welfare
grants encourages parents to have additional children.
The MFG was passed three years before the state created the
CalWORKs program implementing the federal Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(PRWORA). At the time AB 473 passed, the state still operated
an Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.
Since MFG was inconsistent with AFDC policies and regulations,
the state was required to seek a federal waiver, as New Jersey
had done to implement its family cap policy. The state's
waiver application was the subject of a vigorous opposition
effort, and was delayed due to differences with federal
administrators over the policy's coverage, until passage of
PRWORA eliminated the need for the state to obtain a waiver to
implement it.
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3)Related Legislation . In 2007, AB 22 (Lieber), a similar bill,
was held on this committee's Suspense File.
Analysis Prepared by : Julie Salley-Gray / APPR. / (916)
319-2081