RECOMMENDED, AND THE BOARD APPROVED, A $1.5 MILLION CONTRACT BE INVOLVED IN AT LEAST ONE OTHER PROGRAM COMPONENT. 3. ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (FSL) IN ADDITION TO THE REMEDIAL EDUCATION CONTRACT, HE COUNTY HAS CONTRACTED FOR 300 SLOTS TO PROVIDE ENGLISH AS A SECOND SKILLS NECE SARY TO APPLY FOR A JOB, UNDERSTAND AND RESPOND TO INSTRUCTIONS, ETC. REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE IN ACTIVITIES IN AT LEAST ONE OTHER PROGRAM COMPONENT. 4. WORK EXPERIENCE THIS PROGRAM COMPONENT IS DESIGNED TO DEVELOP GOOD WORK HABITS SUPERVISED AND TRAITED BY POPLIC EAPLOYELS • THIS COMPONENT ALSO BENEFITS THE PUBLIC IN THAT THE PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS POVIJE NEEDED SERVICES WHICH WOULD NOT OTHERWISE BE AVA IL/BLE. 5. TARGETED JOB SEARCH ALL PARTICIPANTS ARE REQUIRED TO UNDERTAKE JOB SEARCH WHILE IN THE PROGRAM, PARTICIPANTS RECEIVE A STIPEND EQUAL TO WHAT THEY WOULD HAVE RECEIVED AS A WELFARE SUBSIDY. THEY ALSO HAVE THE SAME ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE, FOOD STAMP ELIGIBILITY, Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Hufford, I notice that Supervisor Edelman is in the room, so let us proceed to hear from him, and then we'll question you. Would you remain seated at the table. Supervisor Edelman, we certainly welcome you. In a way, this is a return for you to one of your earlier activities. I recall the time when you were a staff member of the House Education and Labor Committee. We welcome you, certainly, and the promotion which you have received over the years. We certainly look forward to your testimony. The testimony will be entered in the record in its entirety at this point, but you may proceed to deal with it as you so desire. STATEMENT OF EDMUND D. EDELMAN, LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Mr. EDELMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to present my views about the job training program that has been mixed with a general relief program in this county. In my judgment, this program was set up without adequate and careful review of its implications. It was set up to save money. That is, to take Federal JTPA funds, use them in place of general relief funds, so it was set up to save money. That's not bad. It's wonderful if we can save money in this time of limited resources, but I think we have to look through the implications and the consequences of this program to the people in the county who, one, are on general relief, or, two, want job training. First, I'd like to say that the program has failed. I appreciate Harry Hufford's defense of it. He's a fine chief administrative officer. He represents the majority of the board of supervisors and does a good job at that. But I must say that the program is a failure. The program is a failure because, one, it has resulted in hardship for general relief people who are unable to get their checks. They have to stand in long lines. This is documented. I'm sure you've seen the reports and the paper that it's caused a hardship. People have had to move from the DPSS department into the department of community services that handle job training because what we have done is we've said, "To get your general relief check, you have to go to job training." Now I'm not against giving general relief people job training. God knows they need it. They could benefit from it, but I'm against forcing them into job training at the peril of losing their general relief checks. What we're saying to them is, "Unless you report to a specific place for job training, you're not going to get general relief anymore." Many of these people are not able to receive job training. They have emotional, physical, and mental problems, even though they're designated as employable. If they were employable, they'd be out working. They'd be out holding a job, but they can't. But we're saying, "You must, at peril of losing your general relief, report to job training.' Now the people that would benefit from job training would be those people who would want training. We have programs in the county now. We have the East Los Angeles Training Center where we take general relief people who want to be trained and we give them opportunities to be trained on the job. We do that in conjunction with the Los Angeles City schools, and we have a wonderful program. It's working beautifully and we've kept it in place, and it's working. We train people who want to be trained. But to force people into training who don't want training is to take the sparse funds that are available for training and putting them into a group of people that are not going to be trained, and we then have left out other people who could be trained. Let me give you some examples. When this program came down, it was required that any provider give first priority to general relief. You had to be on general relief for a provider to give you training. Now there are many people in my area that aren't on general relief. They are on AFDC, they meet other qualifications for these funds but they're not on general relief, so they couldn't get any training. They couldn't get any training even though they wanted to. The providers were told, "You can't give any training unless people are on general relief." So a lot of people in this county who wanted training, who could benefit from training, weren't given the training. That was one problem. The second problem was that many of these providers, under the old CETA programs, were able to train particular ethnic groups. For example, in my area, I have Asian providers that are able to take the Indo-Chinese who were coming to this country and others who have particular language or cultural problems, and give them training so they could get off welfare. We have Spanish-speaking providers that are able to take their skills of training people in that area and give them training. That could no longer be done because people were sent to these providers who were unable to handle the kind of training that these providers had provided before and that was working very well. Then, as I said, we have made it difficult for AFDC and other people who need and want training to get training. So I say this program is a failure. One, it hasn't saved the money that was set out to be saved. It was supposed to save $4 million. It was told to the board of supervisors, "This would save $4 million of general relief funds because we can use Federal training funds." It hasn't saved that. In fact, it has cost the county over $12 million. We just had to make a budget adjustment about 2 weeks ago to put more money into the general relief because this program had not succeeded. We should, in my judgment, end this program. I've tried to end it quickly. Unfortunately, I could not get the support of my colleagues to end it. We're not saying we don't want to train general relief people. Yes, we want to train those general relief people who want training, not to force people into training that can't handle it, don't want it and are not going to benefit from it because you're just then taking the Federal funds, you're not getting the success rate of placement that you should have, and we're wasting these funds in my judgment. We're not saving any general relief funds. So we should return general relief to the DPSS department. They do a good job. They know how to handle these people and allow the department of community services to continue the handling of job training funds. We shouldn't mix the two. That's what we've done. I think it has been a program that has failed. We ought to recognize that. We ought to pull out of it, and we ought to do it very quickly so that we can get on to use the precious few dollars in job training where they can do the most effective good. They can train people who want to be trained. It doesn't make sense to train somebody when they're just going there to pick up a check. If they don't really want to hold down a job, it makes literally no sense at all. I appreciate the opportunity to express my views to the committee. I know that you are concerned. The chairman has had a long record of concern, a pioneer in job training programs. I remember, as the chairman said, I was working for a subcommittee of Education and Labor when job training was just beginning in the 1960's. And the chairman has done an outstanding job, provided great leadership in this area, and we appreciate that. We're very proud to have a ranking member of the Education and Labor Committee from Los Angeles who does such good work. I know the other members have outstanding records also. I'm sure this committee will benefit from these hearings, and we appreciate your being here to hear some of our problems. Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions. [Prepared statement of Edmund D. Edelman follows:] PREPARED Statement of EDMUND D. EDELMAN, SUPERVISOR, LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Good morning. My name is Edmund D. Edelman, and I am a Supervisor representing the Third District of Los Angeles County. I am here to give you an overview of the facts that have led me to conclude that my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors erred when they implemented a program by which Federal job training [JTPA] dollars were earmarked to offset county welfare (General Relief) costs. This policy has taken two worthwhile programs-welfare for some 36,000 county residents who cannot support themselves, but do not qualify for State and Federal welfare; and Federal support for the training and retraining of men and women who find themselves out of work-and combined them in a way that has made both programs ineffective. Because of this policy, job training under JTPA is not being provided to women with dependent children, minorities, disabled persons and displaced or laid-off workers, simply because they do not receive General Relief. Meanwhile, General Relief recipients are being compelled to attend job training courses, regardless of whether they are motivated to get that training, or are physically or mentally capable of taking advantage of it. Last August, the Board of Supervisors established a policy to use JTPA dollars to offset the rising costs of General Relief. The Board was told this plan would save the county some $4.0 million during the 1983-84 fiscal year. Now, I am all for saving the taxpayers' dollars and encouraging employable welfare recipients to become self-sufficient, but I questioned whether this plan was workable, and voted against it. The optimistic savings estimates were based on a small pilot program in which AFDC-U family members and General Relief recipients were put into a compulsory training program. It did not seem feasible to me that the majority of General Relief recipients could benefit from this type of job training, nor did the idea of having jobtraining providers essentially administer a welfare program seem workable. The Chief Administrative Office estimated that there would be just 4,700 participants per month in this program. It has turned out that we are now averaging more than 15,000 participants per month. Administratively, these cases, formerly handled by the Department of Public Social [DPSS], were shifted to the Department of Community Services, an agency unprepared to handle the problems of welfare recipi ents. County community service centers were turned into locations for General Relief recipients to pick up their monthly checks. This created tremendous confusion, long lines outside these centers, and disruptions of the worthwhile activities these centers are designed to perform. Moreover, the implementation of this program was, overall, a bureaucratic mess. Agencies designed to handle specific training and cultural needs were given inappropriate referrals. English-speaking residents of south-central Los Angeles were sent to programs whose purpose is to teach newly arrived Asian immigrants how to speak English. East Los Angeles General Relief recipients are ordered to attend classes far away from their homes, requiring two or three bus transfers, while job training centers in the East Los Angeles area are assigned clients from other distant locations. I cite as an example the experience of the United Chinese Restaurants Association. For many years, they have provided an extremely useful service to Los Angeles County as a job training and placement agency specializing in disadvantaged Asian clients, especially recent arrivals to the United States. Because of the change in policy, the Association has had to completely revise its program to serve General Relief recipients. According to the program's executive director, many of these clients come to job training classes erratically, only on days when checks are to be distributed, or under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. It is clear to the instructors that these clients need social services, medical attention or therapy, not job training. The letter I received from that program's director, Chih Hsing Pei, also describes how the policy change has harmed her valuable agency in a financial way. Ms. Pei states: "It is nearly impossible for us to operate the JTPA program under current (Community Services Department) guidelines and budgetary restraints. Before this fiscal year there were agencies which spent up to $7,000 to train and place an individual, now we are asked to do the same plus motivate and provide counseling to these clients for one fifth of the cost. The massive dumping of (General Relief) recipients on agencies like ours is a gross injustice and an ill-advised tactic aimed at reducing the County's burden that simply will not work. It took many years of hard work to establish the rapport and positive relations with the private sector companies which hire our graduates. With the drastic changes in our program and the deterioration in the quality of our trainees, we fear that what we've built up with the private sector will be seriously jeopardized, ultimately causing a negative impact upon our performance." Finally, when you get to the bottom line, you find out that all the confusion, dislocation, and anguish caused by this program has not saved taxpayers one dime. Instead of saving the county $4.0 million as predicted, the Chief Administrative Officer has come in recently with a projection that this program will exceed its budget by a whopping $14.1 million. The issue of runaway welfare costs has to be addressed separately from the JTPA program. In large part, it is the national and local economy that is responsible for the size of Los Angeles County's General Relief rolls, and this is an issue not within the purview of this hearing today. The Department of Public Social Services has traditionally offered work experience training to those General Relief recipients who are employable, which takes into account their special needs. Under a reformed program for using JTPA funds, we could certainly offer job training to General Relief recipients on a voluntary basis. According to some experts in the job training field, a voluntary program would result in actual jobs for about the same percentage of General Relief recipients as a compulsory program-about 10 percent. By opening up the JTPA program to any qualified persons who want and need to develop new, marketable skills, the intent of the Federal government when it created JTPA would be fulfilled. Under the current system, however, Los Angeles County is wasting precious Federal resources, and shutting the door on many men and women for whom this valuable job training program was created. Thank you for allowing me to express my views. Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you, Supervisor. I'm quite sure there will be plenty of them. I think you've indicated that the history of this committee has certainly, I think, indicated that, over a long period of time. We have supported certainly the training of individuals, including those on general relief for meaningful jobs. This act, when it was signed by the President, was described as a program that wouldthis is almost a direct quote-that would provide meaningful job |