Watch for CPA's 2001 Legislative Wrap Up—to be released in mid-June—with information about what to look forward to and what to watch out for in 2002 and movement on key progressive issues.
Register Now for our Regional Conferences
CPA is sponsoring several regional forums for legislators, state policy centers, labor and grassroots advocates this summer to put progressive strategies together for leading issues of the 2002 legislative sessions. To learn more about our forums and to register, go to http://www.stateaction.org/leaders/PLFs/calendar.cfm
While news articles suggest that 1500 election reform bills were introduced in state legislatures this year, only a handful of states tried to address the fundamental flaw of the 2000 election: obsolete voting machines. Only three states, Maryland, Georgia and Florida, passed major legislation to develop statewide uniform voting systems. Florida will likely follow with its own election reform law. In order to fix our electoral system, progressive organizations and legislators will have to band together for a coordinated, concerted effort to enact (and fund) meaningful reforms in 2002.
States Increase Attention to the Wage Gap
Legislation promoting equal pay for women and people of color moved forward in 34 states legislatures across the country (81 bills were introduced), enacting legislation in states as scattered as Texas, Alaska and Georgia. CPA organized a legislative challenge early in the session with state legislators, policy organizations and labor to bring attention and real solutions to the wage gap.
Excitement Mounts as the Prescription Drug Court Decision Sinks In
As reported earlier, states have been unleashed to lower prescription drug prices given the ruling on Maine's model prescription drug law. Since the decision was announced, Florida passed legislation to give Medicare recipients prescription drugs at Medicaid prices. CPA will continue to work with the 27 states who have put forward legislation in 2001 to lower prescription drug costs.
Reaching out to State Legislators and Activists
CPA Sponsors Grassroots Leadership Training for Southern Activists
On June 16, CPA will sponsor an "Effective Advocacy Skill Building" workshop in Jackson, Mississippi for grassroots advocates in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. For more information contact Pascale Graham, Southeast Coordinator at (202) 956-5125 or at pgraham@cfpa.org.
Florida Freshman Legislators Participate in Unique Training Program
As a symbol of Florida legislators' desire to work across bipartisan lines and break through the tension created by the Presidential election, members of the 2001 freshman class of Florida Representatives requested that CPA tailor a leadership program for them as part of our Flemming Fellows Leadership Institute. Florida Senator Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Flemming Fellows '94) believes in the value of educating legislators through such training programs. "The skills and values I learned from the Flemming program made me focus on what's important, helped me figure out how to get someone to agree with them and really helped me as in the maturation process as a legislator," stated Wasserman Schultz.
CPA Releases Report on the U.S.-Japan Exchange on Women in Public Policy
CPA led a delegation of state legislators and community leaders to Japan last November to examine two issues that directly affect women and where women leaders are making a difference in finding solutions - elder care and domestic violence. The purpose of the exchange is to examine key policy issues being actively debated in both countries to learn about contemporary Japanese and American societies and how they are changing.
CPA Held the First Global Leadership Institute Retreat
CPA's first Eleanor Roosevelt Global Leadership Retreat brought together state legislators and foreign policy experts who participated in discussions that covered a range of subjects both local and global in nature. The Retreat created a rare coming together of a diverse group to discuss what it means to live in a global society and the implications for state policy.
CPA Provides Resources to and Collaborates with the Southern Rural Black Women for Economic and Social Justice Advisory Committee Meeting
At the request of Oleta Fitzgerald, Southern Regional Director for the Children's Defense Fund's Black Community Crusade for Children and a strong Southeast grassroots partner, CPA's Southeast and Women's Programs collaborated to provide a joint presentation to the Southern Rural Black Women for Economic and Social Justice. The committee was recently established through support from the Ford Foundation to focus on empowering rural southern women to be advocates for themselves and other women and to assure women's full participation and access to economic and social justice at all levels. The target states for this initiative are Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Participants included over 30 African-American women leaders from grassroots organizations and other national organization representatives, including a representative from the Ford Foundation's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Program.
Check out some New and "Cool" Web Features!
CPA in the News
Welfare funds may fill Ohio budget gap
Critics say the federal block grants might end if they aren't used as intended
Sunday, May 13, 2001
Catherine Candisky
Dispatch Statehouse Reporter
Ohio lawmakers are cheating the poor by using welfare money to balance the state budget, some human-services advocates say.
"Ohio is not using (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) funds to enhance services to needy families, but to solve their budget problems,'' said Ed Lazere, a senior analyst with Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit Washington think tank.
"They are using it to solve their school-funding problem.''
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Spending guidelines States can use federal Temporary Aid to Needy Families money for four basic purposes: Help families move off welfare Provide child care for needy families Reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies Promote two-parent families |
But others defend the practice, praising the creative financing that will prevent millions more dollars from being cut out of the state's $44.8 billion budget.
Republican leaders are pushing through the General Assembly a budget proposal that would tap $260 million in federal welfare money to pay for several programs that had been covered by state funds. As a result, the amount of state dollars spent on poor Ohioans would shrink.
The move comes as state revenue projections continue to decline and lawmakers pump an additional $1.4 billion into primary and secondary education in hopes of resolving a decade-old school-funding lawsuit.
Critics say the plan to grab welfare money might be illegal because some programs don't appear to qualify under federal guidelines. They also complain that the practice amounts to something called "supplantation,'' the replacement of state funds with federal dollars -- a move that could have dire consequences.
"By putting money into the budget and taking money out, Ohio is providing no net gain, and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress say supplantation is not what they intended,'' Lazere said.
Kristina Wilfore, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives, said, "We think it's a really bad trend because of how it can hurt poor families and because it really threatens the integrity of the federal block-grant program.''
Wilfore said some states have used supplantation to provide property-tax credits and to give tax cuts to families above the poverty level.
The federal welfare block-grant program will expire in the fall and Congress soon will re-evaluate state spending to determine how much each should receive in the next budget cycle. Ohio has been getting $728 million a year.
State Sen. Eric D. Fingerhut predicted that when Congress sees how Ohio is spending its welfare money, the state's allocation will be cut.
"The feds have been encouraging us to spend the money, but let's spend it on the people who TANF is supposed to help and on the goals that TANF is supposed to meet,'' said Fingerhut, a Cleveland Democrat who is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.
"What I find ironic is that in the five years that the program has been in place, the state hasn't figured out how to spend the money. . . . When we finally do dip into the money, it's for plugging the budget gap. We're treating it as if it's our own rainy-day fund.''
State programs that would be funded with federal welfare dollars include: Head Start, food banks, down-payment assistance, alcohol and drug treatment, fatherhood programs, Appalachian work-force development and adult protective services. A job program for low-income youth, which had been cut by Gov. Bob Taft, and a new abstinence-education program also would receive federal welfare dollars under the state budget proposal.
Dana Reichert, a policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, commended Ohio for being an innovative leader by taking advantage of increased flexibility in spending federal welfare money.
"States are trying to get more creative, and it's a combination of being more aware of what is in their budget and also has a lot to do with the flexibility of how you can spend TANF money on poor people,'' Reichert said. "It's not just for cash assistance.''
Under welfare-reform guidelines enacted by Congress in 1996, the federal block-grant money legally can be used for four basic purposes: to help families move off welfare, provide child care for needy families, reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies and promote two-parent families.
Getting states to spend the money on services to help needy families become self-sufficient -- in addition to providing them cash assistance -- was the whole idea of welfare reform, said Pam Carter, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration of Families and Children.
Since then, much of the concern from Washington has been not on how states are spending the money, but rather on how much of it they are spending as plunging welfare rolls resulted in huge cash reserves in many states.
In fact, Ohio has the second-largest amount in the nation with a balance in excess of $800 million as of March, according to federal records.
State officials say the reserve has since dropped to $721 million, with much of the money earmarked for various programs later in the year.
In a letter to the nation's governors last year, U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, a Connecticut Republican and former chair of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, warned that supplantation could "provoke Congress to take actions that would hold serious consequences for every state.''
"Congress will react by assuming that we have provided states with too much money. . . . It would be a shame if a few states followed the suggestions of their budget officials and replaced state dollars with TANF dollars in order to provide tax cuts, build roads or bridges, or in general-use funds for non-TANF purposes.''
State Republican leaders say that without the federal welfare money, additional budget cuts would have been unavoidable. They are hoping that an improved economy will help them replace the federal dollars with state money in the next two-year budget cycle.
State Budget Director Thomas W. Johnson told the Senate Finance Committee on Friday that the administration has no problem with how legislators propose to spend the welfare money, but fears that it will leave too little surplus if Ohio's welfare rolls begin to climb.
********************************* Kristina Wilfore Communications Director Center for Policy Alternatives (202) 956-5141 (202) 387-8529 fax www.stateaction.org