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Show Report Questions Welfare Budget The right of the Utah Public Welfare Commissfon to employ a "standard need budget" exceeding exceed-ing maximums provided by the 1947 Legislature to measure eligibility el-igibility and requirements of recipients re-cipients of public assistance has been questioned in a research report re-port released by Utah Foundation. Founda-tion. "The average monthly wage of all industrial workers in Utah is $192," the report states. "The 1947 Legislature placed ceilings on budgetary needs for welfare families: $138 for family of four, $170 for six, $187 for larger families. The Welfare Department Depart-ment has specified the budgetary budge-tary needs of welfare recipients to be $174 for a family of four, $245 for six, and $371 for ten. However, no grants have been paid in excess of the legislative limits since the law was enacted. "Two basic changes were made by the 1947 Legislature in Utah welfare, laws. The law prior to 1947 specified that the Welfare Department should provide persons per-sons in need with a "reasonable" subsistence compatible with decency de-cency and health. The 1947 law states that the amount of assistance assis-tance to be provided shall be measured by the requirements for a "minimum" subsistence compatible with health and well-being. well-being. "The 1947 Legislature also specified spe-cified that the standards of assistance as-sistance compatible with health and well-being should be established estab-lished within the maximum limits lim-its set forth in the law, with the provision that 'budgetary needs' for or in behalf of any case shall be subject to the specified maximums. maxi-mums. "Although the Welfare Department Depart-ment scaled down higher pay ments to the legal maximum, the Department has continued to employ em-ploy the "standard need budget" as a measurement of requirements require-ments for welfare recipients which results in continued payments pay-ments for a large number of welfare wel-fare recipients at a considerably higher level than would the case if the need budget itself were scaled down to conlorm to the maximums provided by law. If the "need budget" were si-aled down within the legal limits, payments to nearly all welfare cases would have been reduced. With the maintenance cf a "standard budget" considerably higher than the legislative maximum, max-imum, payments to more than half of the welfare cases were not affected. The Attorney General Gen-eral has ruled that the need maximums max-imums set by the Welfare Commission Com-mission may not exceed the maximums max-imums prescribed by the Legislature." |
