EXCERPT FROM: The Buffalo News
By Matthew Spina
Jennifer Ward figures that Erie County’s cuts to a day care program will backfire among people like her, the working poor.
“I am probably going to have to quit my job at the end of the month and join the welfare rolls,” said Ward, a paralegal who earns about $28,000 a year and has never been on welfare. “The chaos that is going to occur in Buffalo, N. Y., is just mind-boggling to me.”
Under County Executive Chris Collins, county officials have grown tired of county taxpayers shouldering a larger share — as much as $10 million this year — of a county, state and federal program that subsidizes day care costs for lower-income families. So as a way to spend less, the county will make it more difficult for families to qualify.
The county’s new eligibility rules will cut off day care subsidies for about 1,500 children, or four of every 10 recipients in and around the nation’s third-poorest major city.
Last year, families earning up to 200 percent of the poverty level could still have their day care expenses subsidized. The program helped parents move off welfare or avoid welfare and still make ends meet in low-paying jobs.
But new rules going into effect this month will let qualifying families in Erie County earn no more than 125 percent of the poverty level, or $27,562 a year for a family of four.
Working parents already on public assistance, however, would continue to receive day care subsidies. That is why Ward, a typical recipient, said she and others might think about dropping their jobs and relying on the welfare net for support.
She started pricing the full cost of day care for her two children, ages 6 and 7, when she and hundreds of other families received letters last month stating they had just days to make other arrangements.
She learned she would have to pay $708 a month, or roughly 40 percent of her monthly take-home pay, when she has been paying $264 a month for after-school care and for all-day care during school recesses.
In a letter of protest to the county Department of Social Services, Ward said she would be left with $324 a month for food, clothing and ordinary incidentals after paying rent and utilities. She said she has no car and receives no child support from her children’s father.
“We are being forced to really get on public asstance. What kind of sense does that make, to penalize the people who are doing their part?” she asked, assuming that hundreds of other families will find themselves in the same quandary.
County Social Services Commissioner Carol Dankert installed the new rules.
“I am very concerned about what these folks are going to do,” Dankert said Wednesday, but she discouraged anyone from quitting a job because they will then have trouble qualifying for the program in the future.
“I encourage them to reach out to family and friends and the provider community to evaluate their options and to retain their employment,” she said.
In a news release Monday, Dankert said state support for Erie County’s program has declined by more than $13 million over five years. This year, county taxpayers would have to contribute $10 million unless Erie County took steps to economize, she said.
“The state’s financial problems are cascading down on local governments tasked with providing these services and our clients who depend on them,” Dankert said in the release. “This program is an important one, but Erie County cannot afford to subsidize a funding deficit of over $10 million.”
State support for day care subsidies has receded because federal support, under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, has receded as well in recent years, said Edward Borges, who speaks for the state Office of Children and Family Services.
He said Erie County could have aggressively managed its program earlier, like some other New York counties did.
“[Erie] County clearly saw this problem was coming, and they kept spending money they knew they weren’t going to have anymore,” he said.
Both Borges and Dankert said Erie County officials have talked with the state agency since the summer to find a way around the problem. The county asked if it could receive some of the federal stimulus money made available for day care subsidies but learned it was ineligible because it had been holding some of its allocations for a rainy day, Borges said.
Erie County has now spent its “rollover money” and could be eligible for a second round of stimulus dollars later this year, Borges said. The Office of Children and Family Services will first examine Erie County’s program to make sure it complies with all requirements, he said.