OCR Text |
Show Welfare Legislation Cuts Relief Spending 17 Per Cent In 1947 The public welfare legislation ot 1947 had the effect ot reducing the amount that could be spent tor public assistance by about 17 per cent compared with what the annual an-nual expenditure would have been it t!ie March, 1947, level of grants had been continued, according to an analysis of the new law prepared prepar-ed by the Utah Foundation, an nonprofit non-profit research organization. Appropriated state funds, the report re-port points out, will permit total annual expenditures for public assistance as-sistance of approximately $10,600,000 if the present proportion of Federal participation continues. Had public welfare expenditures continued at the March, 1947 rate, total annual costs of public assistance would have reached approximately $12,-790,000, $12,-790,000, or $2,190,000 more than can be. spent under the annual appropriation approp-riation approved by the Legislature. March 1947 was the last month before be-fore legislative control over sales tax revenues took effect. The legislative directive plainly was to reduce the higher payments then being made to individuals or families, since the 1947 Act estab llshed specific limits for such payments pay-ments well below the Departmenta' schedules which were In effect. The report also notes that there Is apparently ap-parently some question as to how restrictive the legislatures appropriation approp-riation was Intended to be upon the level of public assistance payments. The Department is following the policy of maintaining payments at the most liberal level possible without with-out violating specific limitations of the law, and assuming that funds additional to the legislative ap propriatlon will be forthcoming, either by permission from the Board of Examiners to Incur a deficit, def-icit, or by action of a special session ses-sion of the Legislature. While the action of the 1947 Legislature Leg-islature curtailed the higher payments pay-ments to some welfare cases, the levtl of payments to the majority of welfare recipients continues to be well above that prevailing prior to the adoption of uniform "need" budgets established by the Department Depart-ment in October, 1946. The question ques-tion arises however, as to whether the Legislature intended that the welfare program be tailored to fit the approved appropriation, with such changes In prescribed "budgetary "bud-getary need" to be made as might be necessary to keep expenditure! for tht blcnnlum with In the appropriation. ap-propriation. The report highlights the chang es made by the 1947 Act, chief of which are: Transfer of control of emergency , nlief funds from the governor to the Legislature; changing of eligibility eligi-bility requirements such 83 limiting limit-ing the amount of real property that can be owned in addition to a home owned and occupied, and tae taking of Hens on real property holdings assessed at more than $1,200; and the providing for semiannual semi-annual changes In maximum payments pay-ments In accordance with cost of living as measured by the U. S. Department De-partment of Labor's consumers price Index. |