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90_HB1758ham001
LRB9004394SMdvam01
1 AMENDMENT TO HOUSE BILL 1758
2 AMENDMENT NO. . Amend House Bill 1758 by replacing
3 everything after the enacting clause with the following:
4 "Section 5. The Illinois Public Aid Code is amended by
5 adding Section 12-4.33 as follows:
6 (305 ILCS 5/12-4.33 new)
7 Sec. 12-4.33. Welfare reform research and
8 accountability.
9 (a) The Illinois Department shall collect and report
10 upon all data in connection with federally funded or assisted
11 welfare programs as federal law may require, including, but
12 not limited to, Section 411 of the Personal Responsibility
13 and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and its
14 implementing regulations and any amendments thereto as may
15 from time to time be enacted.
16 (b) In addition to and on the same schedule as the data
17 collection required by federal law and subsection (a), the
18 Department shall collect and report on further information
19 with respect to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
20 ("TANF") program, as follows:
21 (1) With respect to denials of applications for
22 benefits, all of the same information about the family
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1 required under the federal law, plus the specific reason
2 or reasons for denial of the application.
3 (2) With respect to all terminations of benefits,
4 all of the same information as required under the federal
5 law, plus the specific reason or reasons for the
6 termination.
7 (c) The Department shall collect all of the same data as
8 set forth in subsections (a) and (b), and report it on the
9 same schedule, with respect to all cash assistance benefits
10 provided to families that are not funded from the TANF
11 program federal block grant or are not otherwise required to
12 be included in the data collection and reporting in
13 subsections (a) and (b).
14 (d) Whether or not reports under this Section must be
15 submitted to the federal government, they shall be considered
16 public and they shall be promptly made available to the
17 public at the end of each fiscal year, free of charge upon
18 request. The data underlying the reports shall be made
19 available to academic institutions and public policy
20 organizations involved in the study of welfare issues or
21 programs and redacted to conform with applicable privacy
22 laws. The cost shall be no more than that incurred by the
23 Department in assembling and delivering the data.
24 (e) The Department shall, in addition to the foregoing
25 data collection and reporting activities, seek a university
26 to conduct, at no cost to the Department, a longitudinal
27 study of the implementation of TANF and related welfare
28 reforms. The study shall select subgroups representing
29 important sectors of the assistance population, including
30 type of area of residence (city, suburban, small town,
31 rural), English proficiency, level of education, literacy,
32 work experience, number of adults in the home, number of
33 children in the home, teen parentage, parents before and
34 after the age of 18, and other such subgroups. For each
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1 subgroup, the study shall assemble a statistically valid
2 sample of cases entering the TANF program at least 6 months
3 after its implementation date and prior to July 1, 1998. The
4 study shall continue until December 31, 2004. The Department
5 shall report to the General Assembly and the Governor by
6 March 1 of each year, beginning March 1, 1999, the interim
7 findings of the study with respect to each subgroup, and by
8 March 1, 2005, the final findings with respect to each
9 subgroup. The reports shall be available to the public upon
10 request. No later than November 1, 1997, the Department, in
11 consultation with an advisory panel of specialists in welfare
12 policy, social science, and other relevant fields shall
13 devise the study and identify the factors to be studied. The
14 study shall, however, at least include the following
15 features:
16 (1) Demographic breakdowns including, but not
17 limited to, race, gender, and number of children in the
18 household at the beginning of Department services.
19 (2) The Department shall obtain permission to
20 conduct the study from the subjects of the study and
21 guarantee their privacy according to the privacy laws.
22 To facilitate this permission, the study may be designed
23 to refer to subjects by pseudonyms or codes and shall in
24 any event guarantee anonymity to the subjects without
25 limiting access by outsiders to the data (other than
26 identities) generated by the study.
27 (3) The subjects of the study shall be followed
28 after denial or termination of assistance, to the extent
29 feasible. The evaluator shall attempt to maintain
30 personal contact with the subjects of the study, and
31 employ such methods as meetings, telephone contacts,
32 written surveys, and computer matches with other data
33 bases to accomplish this purpose. The intent of this
34 feature of the study is to discover the paths people take
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1 after leaving welfare and the patterns of return to
2 welfare, including the factors that may influence these
3 paths and patterns.
4 (4) The study shall examine the influence of
5 various employability, education, and training programs
6 upon employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
7 between welfare and work.
8 (5) The study shall examine the influence of
9 various supportive services such as child care (including
10 type and cost), transportation, and payment of initial
11 employment expenses upon employment, earnings, job
12 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
13 (6) The study shall examine the frequency of
14 unplanned occurrences in subjects' lives, such as illness
15 or injury, family member's illness or injury, car
16 breakdown, strikes, natural disasters, evictions, loss of
17 other sources of income, domestic violence, and crime,
18 and their impact upon employment, earnings, job tenure,
19 and cycling between welfare and work.
20 (7) The study shall examine the wages and other
21 compensation, including health benefits and what they
22 cost the employee, received by subjects who obtain
23 employment, the type and characteristics of jobs, the
24 hours and time of day of work, union status, and the
25 relationships of such factors to earnings, job tenure,
26 and cycling between welfare and work.
27 (8) The study shall examine the reasons for
28 subjects' job loss, the availability of Unemployment
29 Insurance, the reasons for a subject's return to welfare,
30 programs or services utilized by subjects in the search
31 for another job, the characteristics of the subjects'
32 next job, and the relationships of these factors to
33 re-employment, earnings, job tenure on the new job, and
34 cycling between welfare and work.
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1 (9) The study shall examine the impact of mandatory
2 work requirements, including the types of work activities
3 to which the subjects were assigned, and the links
4 between the requirements and the activities and
5 sanctions, employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
6 between welfare and work.
7 (10) The study shall identify all sources and
8 amounts of reported household non-wage income and
9 examine the influence of the sources and amounts of
10 non-wage non-welfare income on employment, earnings, job
11 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
12 (11) The study shall examine sanctions, including
13 child support enforcement and paternity establishment
14 sanctions, the reasons sanctions are threatened, the
15 number threatened, the number imposed, and the reasons
16 sanctions are not imposed or are ended, such as
17 cooperation achieved or good cause established.
18 (12) The study shall track the subjects' usage of
19 TANF benefits over the course of the lifetime 60-month
20 limit of TANF eligibility, including patterns of usage,
21 relationships between consecutive usage of large numbers
22 of months and other factors, status of all study subjects
23 with respect to the time limit as of each report,
24 characteristics of subjects exhausting the eligibility
25 limit, types of exceptions granted to the 60-month limit,
26 and numbers of cases within each type of exception.
27 (13) The study shall track subjects' participation
28 in other public systems, including the public schools,
29 the child welfare system, the criminal justice system,
30 homeless and food services, and others and attempt to
31 identify the positive or negative ripple effects in these
32 systems of welfare policies, systems, and procedures.
33 (f) The Department shall cooperate in any appropriate
34 study by an independent expert of the impact upon Illinois
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1 resident non-citizens of the denial or termination of
2 assistance under the Supplemental Security Income, Food
3 Stamps, TANF, Medicaid, and Title XX social services programs
4 pursuant to the changes enacted in the federal Personal
5 Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
6 1996. The purpose of such a study must be to examine the
7 immediate and long-term effects on this population and on the
8 State of the denial or termination of these forms of
9 assistance, including the impact on the individuals, the
10 alternate means they find to obtain support and care, and the
11 impact on state and local spending and human services
12 delivery systems. An appropriate study shall select a
13 statistically valid sample of persons denied or terminated
14 from each type of benefits and attempt to track them until
15 December 31, 2000. Any reports from the study received by
16 the Department shall be made available to the General
17 Assembly and the Governor upon request, and a final report
18 shall be submitted upon completion. These reports shall be
19 available to the public upon request.
20 Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon
21 becoming law.".