At this hour the Governor and the four legislative leaders are still meeting to settle the final unresolved issues in the budget. It appears that most of the issues still unresolved are issues that Republicans want which might suggest that most of the higher profile issues have been resolved. But as of this morning we were still hearing CalWORKs issues had not been finalized.

What we are hearing on CalWORKs is not good. It appears that Democratic leaders have agreed to make a historical break with the original bi-partisan agreement to never punish children for the perceived failures of the parent. Right now if parents do not meet work participation we eliminate the parent's portion of the grant until they comply. Though details are not available it appears that for the first time the children's grant may also be cut if the parent fails to meet work requirements. It appears that under the new policy if an adult is sanctioned for a lengthy period and fails to come into compliance that the sanction will increase to 25 percent of the grant. After another period of time if the parent is not in compliance, the grant may be reduced to 50 percent of the grant amount. We do not know how long these "periods" in between cuts would be but likely they would be no sooner than every six months.

Cuts like these would affect a relatively small portion of the CalWORKs population but would have a disproportionate impact on the families with the greatest barriers to work. Though the Governor believes this will force adults not seeking work to go to work, the more likely result is it will cut assistance for families with the least skills to come into compliance.

We are also hearing that the negotiators have agreed to an additional cut to the CalWORKs Single Allocation Fund which provides child care, education and transportation services to welfare to work recipients along with funds to operate county CalWORKs programs. At least $100 million more will be cut (on top of the $271 million cut in the Conference Committee budget) and one report has the cut at $200 million. This cut, no matter which level, will make it harder for families to go to work. While the Governor is criticizing the program for failing to get enough families working, he is now doing the counterintuitive move of cutting the money needed to get families to work. A cynic might look at this as a mean spirited way to give counties no choice but to sanction the hardest to serve to reduce child care and transportation costs.

There has also been talk of limiting how long families can stay on aid but at this writing no agreement has been announced. Democrats were fiercely resisting through the weekend and it could be that time limits will not be reduced. The shortest time limit mentioned last week was 42 weeks and it is not likely it will be reduced beyond that. But this is California in 2009.

WCLP also has heard that Healthy Families will be cut by $53 million likely causing more families to go on the waiting list or fall off assistance. WCLP is also deeply concerned about reports that would cut billions from redevelopment housing set-aside funds. More details will be coming soon.