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AB 1298, co-sponsored by NCYL and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, was introduced by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) on February 22, 2005. Its goal is to establish a less complex, more coordinated system of delivering public benefits to low-income Californians by: (1) simplifying the verification of assets; and (2) developing a comprehensive system by aligning rules, procedures, and improving technology for Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, nutrition assistance, child care, child support, and CalWORKs.
California provides an array of services to low-income families: Medi-Cal and Healthy Families for health care; food stamps and the Women's, Infants, Children (WIC) Program for nutrition assistance; CalWORKs for income and employment services; subsidized child care for working families; and child support services to secure payments from noncustodial parents. Eligibility for these services generally depends on income, but the programs have varying criteria. Unfortunately, divergent and convoluted rules and procedures complicate the process unnecessarily.
Many families are eligible for services under more than one program. For example, 85 percent of CalWORKs families receive food stamps, and all are eligible for Medi-Cal. However, the different procedural and eligibility rules of the programs often result in wasted effort and act as barriers to needed services. As stated by the report of the California Performance Review (CPR), "Often people do not know where to turn for help, or must negotiate a bureaucracy that wastes time and money and diminishes the dignity of those in need of assistance."
AB 1298 establishes a workgroup to develop recommendations for aligning program policies and procedures. The workgroup will seek to maximize Internet-based application systems and other technology to reduce administrative costs and improve customer service, as other states are doing successfully.
AB 1298 passed the Assembly on May 31, 2005; it passed out of the Senate Human Services Committee on August 15, 2005, and was referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill was made into a two-year bill, giving advocates until early 2006 to move it out of the Appropriations Committee for a vote on the Senate floor.
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