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| [ House Amendment 001 ] |
90_HB1758
305 ILCS 5/12-4.33 new
Amends the Illinois Public Aid Code to provide that the
Department of Public Aid, or the Department of Human Services
as successor agency to the Department of Public Aid for the
purposes of administering some aspects of welfare reform,
shall collect and report on information in addition to that
required under the federal welfare reform law for those who
receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ("TANF") and
those who are eligible for other cash benefit programs, which
reports shall be made available to the public. Provides that
the Department shall contract with experts for a longitudinal
study of the implementation of the TANF program and other
welfare reforms, listing criteria, and requiring interim
reports to the General Assembly and the Governor, available
to the public, with a final report in March 2005. Effective
immediately.
LRB9004394SMdv
LRB9004394SMdv
1 AN ACT to amend the Illinois Public Aid Code by adding
2 Section 12-4.33.
3 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
4 represented in the General Assembly:
5 Section 5. The Illinois Public Aid Code is amended by
6 adding Section 12-4.33 as follows:
7 (305 ILCS 5/12-4.33 new)
8 Sec. 12-4.33. Welfare reform research and
9 accountability.
10 (a) The Illinois Department shall collect and report
11 upon all data in connection with federally funded or assisted
12 welfare programs as federal law may require, including, but
13 not limited to, Section 411 of the Personal Responsibility
14 and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and its
15 implementing regulations and any amendments thereto as may
16 from time to time be enacted.
17 (b) In addition to and on the same schedule as the data
18 collection required by federal law and subsection (a), the
19 Department shall collect and report on further information
20 with respect to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
21 ("TANF") program, as follows:
22 (1) With respect to denials of applications for
23 benefits, all of the same information about the family
24 required under the federal law, plus the specific reason
25 or reasons for denial of the application.
26 (2) With respect to all terminations of benefits,
27 all of the same information as required under the federal
28 law, plus the specific reason or reason or reasons for
29 the termination.
30 (c) The Department shall collect all of the same data as
31 set forth in subsections (a) and (b), and report it on the
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1 same schedule, with respect to all cash assistance benefits
2 provided to families that are not funded from the TANF
3 program federal block grant or are not otherwise required to
4 be included in the data collection and reporting in
5 subsections (a) and (b). Each different type of cash benefit
6 subject to this subsection shall be treated separately, as to
7 data collection and reports.
8 (d) Whether or not reports under this Section must be
9 submitted to the federal government, they shall be considered
10 public and they shall be promptly made available to the
11 public each reporting period, free of charge. The Department
12 shall create a mailing list of interested persons or entities
13 and mail copies of the report to them free of charge each
14 reporting period. The data underlying the reports shall also
15 be considered public and made available to interested persons
16 or entities upon request, redacted to conform with applicable
17 privacy laws, free of charge beyond postage and cost of
18 materials, in written or electronic form, formatted for use
19 on a personal computer.
20 (e) The Department shall, in addition to the foregoing
21 data collection and reporting activities, contract with an
22 independent expert or experts to conduct a longitudinal study
23 of the implementation of TANF and related welfare reforms.
24 The study shall select subgroups representing important
25 sectors of the assistance population, including type of area
26 of residence (city, suburban, small town, rural), English
27 proficiency, level of education, literacy, work experience,
28 number of adults in the home, number of children in the home,
29 teen parentage, parents before and after the age of 18, and
30 other such subgroups. For each subgroup, the study shall
31 assemble a statistically valid sample of cases entering the
32 TANF program after its implementation date and prior to
33 January 1, 1998. The study shall continue until December 31,
34 2004. The Department shall report to the General Assembly,
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1 the Governor, and the public by March 1 of each year,
2 beginning March 1, 1999, the interim findings of the study
3 with respect to each subgroup, and by March 1, 2005, the
4 final findings with respect to each subgroup. The data
5 underlying the reports shall also be considered public and
6 made available to interested persons or entities upon
7 request, redacted to conform with applicable privacy laws,
8 free of charge beyond postage and cost of materials, in
9 written or electronic form, formatted for use on a personal
10 computer. No later than November 1, 1997, the Department,
11 in consultation with an advisory panel of specialists in
12 welfare policy, social science, and other relevant fields
13 shall devise the study and identify the factors to be
14 studied. The study shall, however, at least include the
15 following features:
16 (1) Demographic breakdowns including, but not
17 limited to, race, gender, number of children in the
18 household, literacy at the beginning of Department
19 services.
20 (2) The Department shall obtain permission to
21 conduct the study from the subjects of the study and
22 guarantee their privacy according to the privacy laws.
23 To facilitate this permission, the study may be designed
24 to refer to subjects by pseudonyms or codes and shall in
25 any event guarantee anonymity to the subjects without
26 limiting access by outsiders to the data (other than
27 identities) generated by the study.
28 (3) The subjects of the study shall be followed
29 after denial or termination of assistance, to the extent
30 feasible. The Department shall attempt to maintain
31 personal contact with the subjects of the study, and
32 employ such methods as meetings, telephone contacts,
33 written surveys, and computer matches with other data
34 bases to accomplish this purpose. The Department may, by
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1 rule, provide for stipends to the subjects if this will
2 facilitate continuing participation in the study after
3 denial or termination of assistance. The intent of this
4 feature of the study is to discover the paths people take
5 after leaving welfare and the patterns of return to
6 welfare, including the factors that may influence these
7 paths and patterns.
8 (4) The study shall examine the influence of
9 various employability, education, and training programs
10 upon employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
11 between welfare and work.
12 (5) The study shall examine the influence of
13 various supportive services such as child care (including
14 type and cost), transportation, and payment of initial
15 employment expenses upon employment, earnings, job
16 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
17 (6) The study shall examine the frequency of
18 unplanned occurrences in subjects' lives, such as illness
19 or injury, family member's illness or injury, car
20 breakdown, strikes, natural disasters, evictions, loss of
21 other sources of income, domestic violence, and crime,
22 and their impact upon employment, earnings, job tenure,
23 and cycling between welfare and work.
24 (7) The study shall examine the wages and other
25 compensation, including health benefits and what they
26 cost the employee, received by subjects who obtain
27 employment, the type and characteristics of jobs, the
28 hours and time of day of work, union status, and the
29 relationships of such factors to earnings, job tenure,
30 and cycling between welfare and work.
31 (8) The study shall examine the reasons for
32 subjects' job loss, the availability of Unemployment
33 Insurance, the reasons for a subject's return to welfare,
34 programs or services utilized by subjects in the search
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1 for another job, the characteristics of the subjects'
2 next job, and the relationships of these factors to
3 re-employment, earnings, job tenure on the new job, and
4 cycling between welfare and work.
5 (9) The study shall examine the impact of mandatory
6 work requirements, including the types of work activities
7 to which the subjects were assigned, and the links
8 between the requirements and the activities and
9 sanctions, employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
10 between welfare and work.
11 (10) The study shall identify all sources and
12 amounts of reported household non-wage income and
13 examine the influence of the sources and amounts of
14 non-wage non-welfare income on employment, earnings, job
15 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
16 (11) The study shall examine sanctions, including
17 child support enforcement and paternity establishment
18 sanctions, the reasons sanctions are threatened, the
19 number threatened, the number imposed, and the reasons
20 sanctions are not imposed or are ended, such as
21 cooperation achieved or good cause established.
22 (12) The study shall track the subjects' usage of
23 TANF benefits over the course of the lifetime 60-month
24 limit of TANF eligibility, including patterns of usage,
25 relationships between consecutive usage of large numbers
26 of months and other factors, status of all study subjects
27 with respect to the time limit as of each report,
28 characteristics of subjects exhausting the eligibility
29 limit, types of exceptions granted to the 60-month limit,
30 and numbers of cases within each type of exception.
31 (13) The study shall track subjects' participation
32 in other public systems, including the public schools,
33 the child welfare system, the criminal justice system,
34 homeless and food services, and others and attempt to
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1 identify the positive or negative ripple effects in these
2 systems of welfare policies, systems, and procedures.
3 (f) The Department shall also commission a study by an
4 independent expert of the impact upon Illinois resident
5 non-citizens of the denial or termination of assistance under
6 the Supplemental Security Income, Food Stamps, TANF,
7 Medicaid, and Title XX social services programs pursuant to
8 the changes enacted in the federal Personal Responsibility
9 and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The purpose
10 of the study is to examine the immediate and long-term
11 effects on this population and on the State of the denial or
12 termination of these forms of assistance, including the
13 impact on the individuals, the alternate means they find to
14 obtain support and care, and the impact on state and local
15 spending and human services delivery systems. The study
16 shall select a statistically valid sample of persons denied
17 or terminated from each type of benefits and attempt to track
18 them until December 31, 2000. Interim reports shall be made
19 to the General Assembly, the Governor, and the public each
20 March beginning in 1998, and a final report shall be
21 submitted in March 2001.
22 Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon
23 becoming law.