Mike: I'll Sue 'em
April 14, 2003 Mayor Bloomberg has put the City Council on notice: He won't let a gaggle of feckless lawmakers turn back the clock on what is arguably the greatest social-policy success story of the last ten years.
Good for Mayor Mike.
After the council last week overrode his veto of a bill that would seriously erode work rules for welfare recipients, Hizzoner vowed legal action.
"The bill usurps the legal authority of the Human Resources Administration commissioner to implement state-mandated welfare reform," Bloomberg said.
And it "contradicts state and federal law, creating risk of serious financial penalties for the city."
The council, in other words, is trying to tell the mayor how to run his agencies - while potentially leaving the city open to huge financial liabilities.
Worse, its action comes at a time when the positive impact of welfare reform is being confirmed over and over.
The latest evidence: a Manhattan Institute study released just last week by Baruch College professors June O'Neill and Anne Hill.
Prof. O'Neill explains her study's findings on the opposite page. Among those findings:
* From 1996, when national welfare reform passed, to 2001, the poverty rate for single mothers fell by about 20 percent, from 40 percent to 32 percent - a near record.
* The reduction in poverty was particularly large among those groups of single mothers who have always had the highest levels of poverty and welfare participation - minority women, single mothers and high-school dropouts.
* Reform was the biggest factor in the work-participation gains among single mothers, accounting for more than 40 percent of the increase between mid-1996 and the end of 2001. In contrast, less than 10 percent of the employment gain is attributable to economic expansion.
* Single mothers' own cash incomes rose 21 percent between 1995 and 2000, even after averaging in those reporting zero cash income.
* Before leaving welfare, the average incomes of these women ranged from about 10 percent to 40 percent above the poverty level. By the end of the second year after leaving welfare their incomes were 50 percent to 70 percent above poverty. The women, on average, earned $11.60 per hour in 2001, considerably more than the minimum wage.
* Poverty dropped steadily for women who leave welfare, and the poverty decline grew in the years since leaving. The poverty rate among women who left welfare in 1996, for example, fell by about 50 percent in four years.
A recent Los Angeles Times story buttresses these findings. Reporter Elizabeth Shogren interviewed single mothers in Chicago and other big cities.
"Job placement professionals say they can still find work for most of their welfare clients - and that when they do, the clients are invariably better off than they were on the dole," Shogren reports.
In words that echo the Manhattan Institute survey, she adds: "The '96 law . . . has brought about a significant cultural shift among poor, single mothers. Work has taken the place of welfare checks for millions of them as the primary way that they expect to support their families . . ."
This result, of course, is exactly what the champions of welfare reform - including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani - predicted. Shogren points out that, "nationwide, rolls have stabilized at about 2 million families, down from a peak of 5 million in 1994."
Over approximately the same period, the rolls in New York dropped from over 1 million to little more than 400,000.
Given such results, it's distressing to watch City Council hacks try to "mess with success" - at the behest of the poverty advocates, no less.
As the mayor said: "[W]hat the Council did . . . is a tremendous disservice to the very people it claims to be helping . . . The bill is a giant step backwards in welfare reform. We will fight these destructive efforts in court if necessary."
Go to it, Mayor Mike. ©2003 New York Post |
