” place a fair, humane and practical employment and training program that will tap the strong desire of wel\u00ad fare recipients to become independ\u00ad ent, encourage them to make respon\u00ad sible choices and to accept responsi\u00ad bility for their own lives and reduce dependency and welfare costs.\” At the same time, backers of the proposal expect that such a land\u00ad mark system for dispensing welfare aid would begin \u00b7 saving California some $272 million a year when fully implemented, which would come, ac\u00ad cording to estimates, in the sixth year. Agnos said savings, when all fac\u00ad tors are taken into account, would begin immediately. Although new costs of the program would amount to some ‘25.2 mnJion in the first year – much of it beca-.e of increased child-care costs, increasing to ,136.3 million in the sixth year – grant re\u00ad ductions, avoidance of new welfare cases and recidivism, and reductions in administrative costs would bring savings of $19 million the first year; $53.9 million the second; $117 million the third; $222.6 million the fourth; $259.6 million the fifth; and $27U million the sixth year. This, he said, would be in addition to the value of the public work performed. However, tbat vielV is not univer\u00ad sally shared in the J,egislature. As\u00ad semblyman Tom Bates, D-Berkeley, chairman of the Assembly Hum\ufffd Services Committee, charged that the plan would be too costly and that he doubts whether it 0can deliver on its promises. When a liberal and con\u00ad servative team up on welfare,\” he said, \”they inevitably create a Cadil\u00ad lac plan, but the problem is that it __,,. . ‘ \u00b7gets only five miles per gallon. By that I mean that this is a costly pro- \u00b7 gram which gives no guarantees for reducing welfare rolls or providing jobs.\” Bates added: \”I\u00b7 support the goals and objectives outlined by the pro\u00ad posal’s authors, but I question whether it can deliver on what it promises. My estimates are that the net new cost of the plan is closer to $136 million for the first year of full implementation.\” As the plan rolls through the Leg\u00adislature, Bates said, uquestions need to be rais…ACI. Can we afford it? Will we get 0\\11’ money’s worth? Who will create the 40,000 workfare slots; where are the 150,000 jobs needed to meet the touted 80 percent success rate of the program? A statewide lobbying group called the Coalition of California WeHare Rights Organi7.ations, Inc., also im\u00ad mediately attacked the bi-partisan plan, charging that it would \”result in 300,000 additional latchkey chil\u00ad dren in California; take away jobs from thousands of Californians \u00b7 and force women with children to do the \u00b7 same jobs _without pay. The proposal is primarily limited to mandatory job-search-workfare, geared toward dead-end low paying jobs,\” charged the group’s lobbyist, Kevin. Aslanian. Advocates of the revised workfare proposal, however, insist that major savings to the taxpayers are predict\u00ad able, that the plan will help break the growing cycle\u00b7 of welfare dependency by making the finding of a job by a welfare . recipient an advantage rather than a danger of exchanging current weHare benefits for a low\u00adpaying job bringing in scarcely more family income than was provide\\:! anyway on the public dole. During these debates, though, ad .. vocates of the\u00b7 plan will carefully steer clear of what has become a po\u00ad litically unpalatable term in connec\u00ad tion with the concept of working for welfare. ”Workfare,\u00b7\u00b7 they said, will be steered over to a new and more politically palatable phraseology – \”Fair Work.\” ”
