Leren _en_ bijstand

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Apart dat Bert dit zojuist ter sprake brengt en er in New York (8 miljoen inwoners in 2000 ) net zo iets wordt besloten. Overigens tegen de zin
van de burgemeester in, die zegt de zaak te gaan aanvechten voor de rechter.
Die heeft er gisteren dit over gezegd: http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2003a/pr093-03.html

The New York Times schrijft er vandaag dit over:
Welfare Veto Is Overridden by Council
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/nyregion/10COUN.html
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN

Over the veto of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the City Council passed legislation yesterday that would significantly soften the welfare-to-work
policies that became New York City's trademark during the Giuliani administration.

The legislation, which passed 46 to 5 yesterday, has long been on the wish list of advocates for the poor who say the work requirements in the
city's welfare programs are too harsh, particularly in a weak economy. And the Council's ability to override Mayor Bloomberg's veto so easily
suggests that he does not wield the same influence over the Council as his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who made overhaul of welfare a
signature issue.

The broadly drawn legislation, first passed in February, would give almost everyone on the welfare rolls a right to at least some education and
training — something that is now largely at the discretion of the Human Resources Administration. The law would also greatly increase the
number of hours of education that recipients could count toward federal and state work requirements. In the case of recipients approved for
college programs, it could be as high as 35 hours a week.

Mr. Bloomberg, who vetoed the bill on March 14, criticized the override yesterday. He said the bill would cost the city millions of dollars it
could ill afford in the midst of a budget crisis, because it would lead to federal penalties tied to minimum work requirements. He vowed to
challenge the law in court, meaning that it could be some time before the law takes effect.

"Their actions fly in the face of research, experience and common sense," Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. "The requirement to work is an
indispensable component of welfare reform. It ends the cycle of dependency, which ruins too many lives and creates self-sufficiency in its
place."

He said the Council had chosen "to turn back the clock on welfare reform, reviving a dated, discredited policy that we long ago learned was a
failure."

The bill would seem to put the City Council on an ideological collision course with the Bush administration and Congress, which is expected to
pass legislation this year tightening federal work requirements further.

In 1996, after the federal government made historical changes to welfare laws, giving local governments more power over disbursing funds, the
Giuliani administration started an aggressive policy of forcing able-bodied recipients to work for their checks. The results were stunning. In
subsequent years, the rolls dropped by almost 800,000 people.

Cees: dus 1 op de 10 bewoners ging toen werken en was voor die tijd werkloos.

Many experts viewed New York's law as a success. Child poverty decreased, income of women who left the rolls increased, and even after the
economy soured in 2000 the rolls continued to shrink.

Advocates of the poor, however, have long insisted that the work requirements could be punitive. Welfare recipients who were illiterate or just
weeks short of finishing high school degrees were forced to sweep parks and pick up litter, instead of finishing training that would give them
higher paying jobs, the advocates said.

They argued that the best chance for welfare recipients to stay employed and to be employed at a decent wage was more education and training.

"We've achieved a lot, but one of the weakest parts of the city's program remains the fact that most welfare recipients get very little preparation
for the realities of the private sector economy," said Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn councilman who was a prime sponsor of the bill.

Mr. de Blasio said he expected the new law to complement current policy. "Most people will continue to do the type of workfare and other
programs that already exist," he said. "But some will show initiative to pursue training and education, and those who can find the funding to do that
should have the right to do so."

The bill allows almost any recipient on the rolls to demand that some kind of education be part of a work plan, eliminating the administration's
discretion. The bill also eliminates a 20-hour work requirement, the cornerstone of the current program, and instead allows an individualized
mixture of work and education to equal 35 hours a week. Those seeking college degrees would also be allowed to count study time.

Citing its own academic experts and reports, the Bloomberg administration said that education and training worked best to improve the economic
potential of recipients if they were in conjunction with concrete work requirements. "The concurrent model is the best approach to get people on
the road to self-sufficiency," said Frank Sobrino, a Human Resources spokesman. "This is not mean-spirited or arbitrary — it is what works."

Former officials of the Giuliani administration said the new law was reminiscent of days when welfare recipients would enroll in education
classes but not attend them or ever enter the work force.

"If they aren't confrontational and actually implement it, there is significant risk that people won't work and we will see the welfare roles begin to
climb again," said Mark Hoover, a deputy commissioner under Mr. Giuliani.

The bill contains measures meant to prevent such an outcome, including attendance requirements and a demand that recipients keep up at least a
C average.

Those requirements, combined with the fact that the Council allocated no new money for the training and education it was permitting, led council
members to predict that only a small percentage of those on the rolls would actually seek to take advantage of its provisions.

In addition to the work training bill, the Council also overrode Mr. Bloomberg's vetoes of three other bills. Two will provide women greater
access to emergency contraceptives.

The third will require the city's schools chancellor to provide detailed quarterly reports on the status of all school construction projects, a sore
subject with council members who have tried to track long-delayed projects and cost overruns.

Cees: Daar heeft de burgemeester ook iets over gezegd (stadskantoren die vrijkomen - door bezuinigingen- worden ingezet als school en leveren
zo 5000 plaatsen op en nieuwe schoollokalen 15000 en dat allemaal voor september 2003, volgend jaar 3000 en 5000 resp.)
http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2003a/pr064-03.html
Bloomberg heeft onderwijs als een speerpunt behandeld. Hij heeft de City Board of Education (die alle onderwijs regelde) eruit geschopt en
_een_ supervisor aangesteld. Daarnaast alle leidingevende mensen op scherp gezet door strikte richtlijnen te geven en daarover rapporten te
eisen, en alles op straffe van ontslag als niet voldaan wordt aan rapportage en verlangde prestaties.
Hij verantwoordt het voldoen aan zijn campagnebeloften hier:
http://home.nyc.gov/html/om/html/promises/home.html
Dit laatste mag ook wel bij ons geintroduceerd worden :).

Legislators said the law would provide much-needed oversight. "The message is you can't take the public out of public education," said
Councilwoman Eva S. Moskowitz, the chairwoman of the Education Committee.

But the welfare debate stirred the strongest emotions. An opponent of the bill, Councilwoman Madeline Provenzano of the Bronx, was booed by
welfare advocates in the balcony of the Council chamber. Speaking into a microphone that suddenly stopped working, Ms. Provenzano, who is
white, was heard to say, "You people need to get jobs, not be in school." She later insisted to reporters that she did not use the phrase "you
people," which some of her colleagues said was racially insensitive.

She said, "I am sure that I did not say it. If it was interpreted that way, if someone thought they heard me say that, yes, I'm sorry. But I know I
would never use that."

But Councilman Leroy Comrie, the deputy majority whip, who was sitting next to her, said that she did. Mr. Comrie, who is black, said he heard
her say, "You people should be at work and not at City Hall." But he added that Ms. Provenzano, who put herself through college while raising
three children as a single mother, was frustrated by the passage of the bill. "Madeline was having a bad day," he said. "I don't think she meant it
racially."

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst - cees at binkhorst.xs4all.nl

Een paar recente uitspraken:
'Als de VN relevant willen zijn, moeten ze precies doen wat ik zeg.'
'Ik weet dat ik tegen de wensen van de Security Council en de tekst
van het VN-verdrag in ga, maar ik doe het wel om een VN-resolutie
uit te voeren.'
Een oude uitspraak van Thomas Paine uit 1795 "Every man must
finally  see the necessity of  protecting the rights of others as the
most effectual security for his own"

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