$70 MILLION SHORTFALL FOR WELFARE PROGRAMS.

Byline: - Troy Anderson

Some programs designed to help move people off welfare rolls will have to be postponed or cut because of a projected $70 million shortfall in Los Angeles County's welfare-to-work program, officials said Monday.

The Board of Supervisors will get a report today on how the CalWORKS shortfall occurred and then vote whether to fill the $70 million gap with money from another welfare fund earmarked for 46 programs designed to enable low-income families to achieve self-sufficiency.

Those programs include relocation grants for homeless families, career counseling and child care for non-needy caregivers, Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said Monday.

``There are some programs that will be deferred until we find out more about what the state is doing,'' Janssen said.

The financial squeeze is made worse by Gov. Gray Davis' budget cuts as California tries to avoid a $12 billion deficit. Davis has proposed to cut $36 million for CalWORKS adult education and career training and $58 million to help community colleges develop programs to help welfare recipients.

Supervisor Gloria Molina is upset that the county's largest department, the $3.2 billion Department of Public Social Services, didn't notify the supervisors of the shortfall sooner, an aide said.

``The fiscal budget is more than halfway through, and we are barely being informed about such a huge deficit in the budget,'' said Molina spokesman Miguel Santana. ``She plans on introducing a motion asking that there be better accounting of how this problem will be dealt with in the next year and how we can make administrative cuts to relieve the impact.''

The state has substantially underfunded CalWORKS, officials say. The county's actual costs are $535 million a year, but the state only gave the county $469 million this fiscal year.

To cut costs, the county has frozen management and other administrative vacancies, shifted welfare-to-work staff to other programs and curtailed expenditures for services and supplies.

Of the county's 1.8 million welfare recipients, the numbers in the CalWORKS program have been dropping steadily - from 702,084 in 1998 to 572,509 as of Oct. 1.

Brian Lew, county office welfare spokesman, said the numbers indicate that those participating in the program are moving from cash assistance programs to food stamps, Medi-Cal and other noncash assistance programs.

``People are getting jobs; however, they still might not be making enough to get out of total need,'' Lew said.