OCR Text |
Show Details Of Utah's Welfare Law Told n Study Report THE public welfare legislation legisla-tion of 1947 had the effect of reducing the amount that could be spent for public assistance by about 17 per cent compared with what the annual expenditure would have been if the March, 1947 level of grants had been continued, ccgrding fp an analysis anal-ysis of the new la W prepared by the Utah Foundationr Appropriated state funds, the report points out, will permit total annual expenditures for public assistance of approximately approximate-ly $10,600,000 if the present proportion pro-portion 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 approved by the Legislature. March, 1947 was the last month before legislative control con-trol over sales tax revenues took effect. The legislative directive plainly plain-ly was to reduce the higher payments pay-ments then being made to individuals indi-viduals or families, sine; the 1947 Act established specific limits for such payments well below the Department schedules which were in effect. The report also notes that there is apparently apparent-ly gome question as to how; restrictive re-strictive the legislative apprer priatiori w?s intended to be upon the level of .public, assistance payments. The Department Is following the policy of maintaining maintain-ing payments at the most liberal level possible without violating specific limitations of the law, and assuming that f;mds ad--tional to the ' legislative appropriation appro-priation will be forthcoming, either by permission from the Board of Examiners to incur a deficit, or by action of a special session of the Legislature. WHILE the action of the 1947 Legislature curtailed the higher payments to some welfare cases, the level of payments to the ma jority of welfare recipients continues con-tinues to be well above that prevailing pre-vailing prior to the adoption of uniform "need" budgets established estab-lished by the Department in October, 1946. The question arises, however, as to whether the Legislature intended that Uie welfare program be tailored to fit the approved appropriation, with such changes in prescribed ''budgetary need" to be made as mjght be necessary tQ keep expenditures ex-penditures f pr the biennium within the appropriation, Tho. report highlights the changes made by the 1947 Act, chief of which are: Transfer of control of emergency emer-gency relief funds from the Governor Gov-ernor to the Legislature; changing chang-ing of eligibility requirements such as limiting the amount of real property that can be owned in addition to a home owned and occupied, and the taking of liens on real property holdings assessed asses-sed at more than $1,200; and the providing for semi-annual changes chan-ges in maximum payments in accordance with cost of living as measured by the U. S. Department Depart-ment of Labor's consumers' price index. |