Florida rejects privatized welfare model, chooses public-non-profit route.

TALLAHASSEE -- After much deliberation and speculation, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has rejected the idea of privatizing the state's welfare system. In stead it has chosen the route of public and non-profit model.

Resisting considerable pressure from the White House and and high powered business interests, Gov. Bush decided not pursue a plan to turn local welfare offices over to a private company. He has opted instead to set up a combination of state workers and community groups in an ambitious effort to modernize the system, Department of Children & Families Secretary Lucy Hadi said Bush favours a plan to combine state workers with local community groups.

Hadi told the governor she believed that the new system might yield as great a saving for the state as the plan to totally privatize welfare operations.

The state's welfare reform will close about 150 local welfare offices around the state. Community groups and other outlets that can provide access to the system will replace these offices, stated Hadi.

But she told a legislature committee that the new system will improve the ability of welfare applicants to seek state services. "Our objective here is to put services where people are" and at the same time reduce administrative costs, she continued.

The current system of local welfare offices, which determines the eligibility of Floridians for services such as Medicaid or food stamps, would be replaced by a network of community organizations, senior centers, food banks, local health departments and other groups that would provide access to the system.

"They will be the front door for the people who are going there for other services?" Hadi stated.

State workers would still operate a half-dozen or so processing centers around the state, where information would be collected from the welfare applicants and eligibility would be determined. Access to the processing centers would be provided through a new Internet system as well as through a new phone system.

Closing the local welfare offices and the reduction in state jobs is expected to save $43 million this year with the ultimate goal of $69 million in savings annually.

The welfare agency's staff declined in 2003 from more than 7,200 positions and is now about 6,500 positions, expected to fall to 4,109 jobs by June 2006, when the new system is in place. The job cuts would have been even greater had the state implemented an alternate plan to turn the whole welfare-eligibility system over to a private company.

Mark Neimeiser, a lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that represents state workers, also endorsed the decision.

Hadi said agreements with community organizations will have to be worked out before they become part of the welfare system. Local groups would be provided the technology, training and even salaries for workers to operate the new system.