Posted
3-18-99
Minnesota Welfare Rights Coalition
Bemidji Duluth Mankato Minneapolis/St Paul Moorhead Northfield St Cloud
Virginia Winona
612-822-8020 218-722-0257
The position of the MN Welfare Rights Coalition is that MFIP needs a complete overhaul.So far this year, we are supporting the following bills, which are just a start to undoing the cruel MFIP law:
HF546 Greenfield: Repeals the $100 grant cut to families in subsidized housing, which is set to take effect July 1, 1999. Makes up for food stamp cuts to immigrants 100%: Unless politicians act now, food money for non-citizens will run out on July 1. SF483
HF945 Huntley, Otremba, Koskinen, Dorn, Wecjman, Seifert for people at who test below the 8th grade level, the bill guarantees ESL and adult basic education supports. Specifies that work is not ruled out by education (up to 24 months) for 30% of the caseload. The federal government allows 30% of the caseload to be in post-secondary education, and MN is far below that. This is needed because right now, the job counselors have too much power, and are denying education, when it is what we need to get our families off welfare for good. In our survey, we found that two thirds were not even TOLD about education, which is against the law. SF965 (Lourey, Berglin, Foley Piper, Hottinger, Terwilling: The Senate version now includes provisions that allow post employment training, and stops the clock for people in education with high GPA's)
HF944 Mariani, Huntley, Tingelstad, Wecjman, Clark changes the sanctions under MFIP. It allows more time for us to respond to a sanction notice, from 10 days to 20 days. The job counselor must first meet with us to find out what's going on: why we are unable to do the requirement. (We found through our survey that 44% were forced to do work activities while legally exempt.) The bill reduces sanctions from the current ten and thirty percent to five and ten percent, and stops sanctions on food stamps. Finally, the bill says that we can't be sanctioned when a judicial proceeding conflicts with MFIP work activities. SF966 (Berglin, Piper, Hottinger)
HF942 Mariani, Jennings, Wecjman, Koskinen, Abeler stops the five year time clock for families with an incapacitated parent or where the parent is taking care of an incapacitated family member. It also stops the clock for those of us who are employed the minimum number of hours required. SF964 (Berglin, Foley, Dille, Piper)
HF943 Jennings, Mariani, Dorn, Wecjman provides a "start work grace period", which would disregard income from employment for 120 days, giving us a chance to get on our feet when we start working. Under AFDC, there was a 90 day grace period. Currently, under MFIP, there is none. Wasn't MFIP supposed to "reward work"? In our survey, we found that although 2/3 of the people got jobs, 88% said that they did not have a chance to get on their feet before the grant got cut. SF963 (Hottinger, Terwilliger, Ten Eyck, Dille, Morse)
SF1178 (Solon, Piper, Hottinger, Lourey) repeals the $87
cash cut to children who are child only cases (for example, where there is a relative
caregiver not on the MFIP grant or the parent is on SSI). This cut happened when MFIP took
effect.