County Job Program to Get $27 Million

No one knows exactly what welfare reform will bring to Los Angeles County in the coming years, but a bit of good news arrived Tuesday: $27.4 million to be spent this year on efforts to put more people to work.

The money will be used to expand the county’s GAIN program, thanks to pending changes in state and federal welfare programs that seek to shift emphasis from traditional forms of welfare to those that encourage recipients to get unsubsidized jobs.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to accept the money, and ordered county welfare officials to report back soon on how they plan to spend it.

“The GAIN program is a precursor of the welfare-to-work concept that everybody has been talking about,” Zev Yaroslavsky, board chairman, said after the vote. “This county has been doing it, and I think we have an opportunity to expand and build on it and a need to build on it. Failure to do so will make us unprepared for welfare reform.”

Lynn Bayer, director of the Department of Public Social Services, said GAIN will play an increasingly significant role in the county’s welfare program. She plans to use much of the $27.4 million in state and federal money to hire an additional 300 job-training employees for GAIN, which stands for Greater Avenues for Independence.

“We’re very pleased because it allows us to start moving forward aggressively in moving people from welfare to work,” Bayer said.

The issue of welfare reform is expected to dominate the agenda for the state’s Republican governor and its Democratic-controlled Legislature for much of the coming year.

In his annual State of the State address Tuesday night, Gov. Pete Wilson kept most details of his plans for overhauling welfare a secret, waiting to release them with his 1997-98 budget proposal Thursday. But in listing the principles that will guide his decisions, Wilson sketched a system that would force the poor onto a short and demanding path that leads to a job or the end of public assistance.

Whatever the final outcome, Los Angeles County will bear the brunt of such reform efforts, because about 40% of the state’s welfare recipients live within the county’s boundaries.

GAIN chief John Martinelli said the county plans to try something new with the money; instead of using it only to help those already on welfare get jobs, officials will target those who have never received a dime of public assistance. “Right now we are not able to offer services until people are already on aid,” he said. “What we’d like to do is provide these kinds of services when people come in for their first contact, as an alternative to welfare.”

*

Originally, the Department of Public Social Services planned to roll over about $8 million of the funds into next fiscal year’s budget. But Supervisor Gloria Molina on Tuesday directed county officials to use all of it this fiscal year. Some of the money could be used, she said, to aid the many overworked community-based organizations that help the county with its job-training efforts.

“The county is facing extraordinary challenges in light of welfare reform,” Molina said. “In order to meet these challenges, the county must expand its GAIN program to place as many welfare recipients as possible into employment.”

Although the news of the $27.4 million is good for the county in the short run, some officials pointed out that it is only a temporary funding measure aimed at mitigating the severe funding cuts in welfare programs that are expected to come at the beginning of the next fiscal year, starting July 1.

Already this month, the state has moved to cut welfare payments for 2.7 million recipients statewide.

“It’s very positive,” county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said of the new funding. “It gives us an additional head start in implementing the work element of welfare reform.”

The GAIN program has been in existence for nine years, but it was retooled in 1993 to mimic a highly successful job-training effort in Riverside County. Like that program, Los Angeles County’s emphasizes job readiness instead of training in specific fields of work. GAIN program participants go through a motivational session and are tutored in such things as how to prepare a resume, how to dress for success at work and how to convey the right attitude about starting--and keeping--a job. “Employers are saying give me workers with the right attitude, and I’ll train them,” Bayer said.

Bayer expects GAIN to help 65,000 unemployed county residents this year, up from 35,000 last year. Recent statistics show that about half of GAIN’s participants find work, and that 70% of them are still working six months later.

Elizabeth Ramirez is one GAIN participant who credits the program with helping her find employment. A 26-year-old single mother of three, Ramirez said she walked into the GAIN office in Monterey Park last January after realizing her secretarial skills had become rusty after too many years as a homebound mother.

Ramirez is now one of many GAIN participants who work part-time for the county helping others learn job skills while they continue to look for work themselves. On Monday, she learned that she has been hired as a secretary at a corporate lighting company.

*

“They [GAIN] allow me to use the phones, type up a resume, help me with interviews and with what to do and what not to do, everything,” she said. “It’s an excellent program.”

But not everyone is thrilled with GAIN. Some say it places too much emphasis on the quantity of jobs found, not the quality or pay. State Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) has held hearings on the issue and has been a critic in the past. But Watson now says Los Angeles County’s GAIN program is working well.

“We have to teach the work ethic, and GAIN does that,” she said Tuesday. “I just hope the money the governor is giving L.A. County is enough to address all of the recipients that need programs like GAIN.”