Welfare hot issue for state

      Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio believes the top issue facing the Legislature as it opens today -- besides the budget, always lawmakers' biggest challenge -- is welfare reform.
      Nevada legislators have to make decisions on some emotional issues in their efforts to create a state welfare plan under the federal welfare reform bill passed in 1996.
      Lawmakers are expected to debate options, including:
      --Should family caps be established so that no additional welfare benefits would be paid to women who keep having children?
      --Should welfare recipients be tested for drugs and cut off from benefits if they test positive?
      --Should legal immigrants who are not citizens be banned from receiving benefits?
      Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., a co-author of the House welfare reform bill, hopes Nevada legislators answer yes to all three of those questions.
      He wants state lawmakers to set family caps, he supports drug-testing, and he believes welfare should be limited to citizens.
      But not everyone agrees with him.
      Democratic Gov. Bob Miller said in October he does not support cutting Medicaid and welfare cash benefits to legal immigrants already on the rolls. It now costs the state $776,963 for the 1,300 Nevada families with one or more legal immigrants receiving benefits.
      However, Miller's stance won't necessarily stop legislators from proposing or passing laws that would cut off such payments.
      Nevada Welfare Administrator Myla Florence is in the unenviable position of facing a series of deadlines this spring in the middle of a legislative session where lawmakers and the governor may disagree on how the final plan should be crafted.
      "I hate the implementation expectations," she said. "You can't take 61 years of rules and expect a state agency to implement changes in a three- to nine-month period."
      Florence feels the federal law is "probably well-intentioned. But we don't fully understand how children in the long term will be impacted. The challenge is to make sure we don't hurt kids in the largest social experiment ever undertaken."
      To a certain extent, Florence said, Nevada was ahead of the game because of its efforts to launch its own state reform plans in 1995.
      Miller's reform efforts two years ago included adding money to provide employment and training to 6,000 welfare mothers, twice the number trained before, and hiring more welfare workers to allow more time to focus on finding jobs for applicants.
      The caseload has dropped by 27 percent since summer 1995.
      "With a declining caseload under block grants, we fare better than under the old system," Florence said. "We've lost about 10,000 recipients since the base for the block grant was established in the federal fiscal year 1995."
      So Nevada's $44 million federal block grant provides more money for fewer recipients -- a good starting position.
      Lawmakers also have other decisions to make that could be controversial, such as:
      --Should deadbeat dads be denied food stamps?
      --What programs will the state implement to reduce out-of-wedlock births and abortion rates in order to compete for federal bonuses?
      --Within federal guidelines, what will the state enact for work requirements and lifetime limits on assistance?
      Miller is proposing a 24-month limitation on cash assistance to families in any one period, a limit that is stricter than federal laws, which allow welfare recipients to receive financial help beyond 24 months if they are working at least 20 hours a week.
      Clark County welfare officials worry that the burden for those being pushed off the state welfare rolls will land upon the county's shoulders once people start losing benefits, starting with those cut off from federal Supplemental Security Income payments this month.
      Hard data isn't yet available on how many people have turned to the county for help since their SSI payments were lost, Clark County Social Service Director Verlia Davis said last week.
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