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91_HB2595
LRB9105341SMdv
1 AN ACT to amend the Illinois Public Aid Code by changing
2 Section 12-4.33.
3 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
4 represented in the General Assembly:
5 Section 5. The Illinois Public Aid Code is amended by
6 changing Section 12-4.33 as follows:
7 (305 ILCS 5/12-4.33)
8 Sec. 12-4.33. Welfare reform research and
9 accountability.
10 (a) The Illinois Department shall collect and report
11 upon all data in connection with federally funded or assisted
12 welfare programs as federal law may require, including, but
13 not limited to, Section 411 of the Personal Responsibility
14 and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and its
15 implementing regulations and any amendments thereto as may
16 from time to time be enacted.
17 (b) In addition to and on the same schedule as the data
18 collection required by federal law and subsection (a), the
19 Department shall collect and report on further information
20 with respect to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
21 ("TANF") program, as follows:
22 (1) With respect to denials of applications for
23 benefits, all of the same information about the family
24 required under the federal law, plus the specific reason
25 or reasons for denial of the application.
26 (2) With respect to all terminations of benefits,
27 all of the same information as required under the federal
28 law, plus the specific reason or reasons for the
29 termination.
30 (c) The Department shall collect all of the same data as
31 set forth in subsections (a) and (b), and report it on the
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1 same schedule, with respect to all cash assistance benefits
2 provided to families that are not funded from the TANF
3 program federal block grant or are not otherwise required to
4 be included in the data collection and reporting in
5 subsections (a) and (b).
6 (d) Whether or not reports under this Section must be
7 submitted to the federal government, they shall be considered
8 public and they shall be promptly made available to the
9 public at the end of each fiscal year, free of charge upon
10 request. The data underlying the reports shall be made
11 available to academic institutions and public policy
12 organizations involved in the study of welfare issues or
13 programs and redacted to conform with applicable privacy
14 laws. The cost shall be no more than that incurred by the
15 Department in assembling and delivering the data.
16 (e) The Department shall, in addition to the foregoing
17 data collection and reporting activities, seek a university
18 to conduct, at no cost to the Department, a longitudinal
19 study of the implementation of TANF and related welfare
20 reforms. The study shall select subgroups representing
21 important sectors of the assistance population, including
22 type of area of residence (city, suburban, small town,
23 rural), English proficiency, level of education, literacy,
24 work experience, number of adults in the home, number of
25 children in the home, teen parentage, parents before and
26 after the age of 18, and other such subgroups. For each
27 subgroup, the study shall assemble a statistically valid
28 sample of cases entering the TANF program at least 6 months
29 after its implementation date and prior to July 1, 1998. The
30 study shall continue until December 31, 2004. The Department
31 shall report to the General Assembly and the Governor by
32 March 1 of each year, beginning March 1, 1999, the interim
33 findings of the study with respect to each subgroup, and by
34 March 1, 2005, the final findings with respect to each
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1 subgroup. The reports shall be available to the public upon
2 request. No later than November 1, 1997, the Department, in
3 consultation with an advisory panel of specialists in welfare
4 policy, social science, and other relevant fields shall
5 devise the study and identify the factors to be studied. The
6 study shall, however, at least include the following
7 features:
8 (1) Demographic breakdowns including, but not
9 limited to, race, gender, and number of children in the
10 household at the beginning of Department services.
11 (2) The Department shall obtain permission to
12 conduct the study from the subjects of the study and
13 guarantee their privacy according to the privacy laws.
14 To facilitate this permission, the study may be designed
15 to refer to subjects by pseudonyms or codes and shall in
16 any event guarantee anonymity to the subjects without
17 limiting access by outsiders to the data (other than
18 identities) generated by the study.
19 (3) The subjects of the study shall be followed
20 after denial or termination of assistance, to the extent
21 feasible. The evaluator shall attempt to maintain
22 personal contact with the subjects of the study, and
23 employ such methods as meetings, telephone contacts,
24 written surveys, and computer matches with other data
25 bases to accomplish this purpose. The intent of this
26 feature of the study is to discover the paths people take
27 after leaving welfare and the patterns of return to
28 welfare, including the factors that may influence these
29 paths and patterns.
30 (4) The study shall examine the influence of
31 various employability, education, and training programs
32 upon employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
33 between welfare and work.
34 (5) The study shall examine the influence of
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1 various supportive services such as child care (including
2 type and cost), transportation, and payment of initial
3 employment expenses upon employment, earnings, job
4 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
5 (6) The study shall examine the frequency of
6 unplanned occurrences in subjects' lives, such as illness
7 or injury, family member's illness or injury, car
8 breakdown, strikes, natural disasters, evictions, loss of
9 other sources of income, domestic violence, and crime,
10 and their impact upon employment, earnings, job tenure,
11 and cycling between welfare and work.
12 (7) The study shall examine the wages and other
13 compensation, including health benefits and what they
14 cost the employee, received by subjects who obtain
15 employment, the type and characteristics of jobs, the
16 hours and time of day of work, union status, and the
17 relationships of such factors to earnings, job tenure,
18 and cycling between welfare and work.
19 (8) The study shall examine the reasons for
20 subjects' job loss, the availability of Unemployment
21 Insurance, the reasons for a subject's return to welfare,
22 programs or services utilized by subjects in the search
23 for another job, the characteristics of the subjects'
24 next job, and the relationships of these factors to
25 re-employment, earnings, job tenure on the new job, and
26 cycling between welfare and work.
27 (9) The study shall examine the impact of mandatory
28 work requirements, including the types of work activities
29 to which the subjects were assigned, and the links
30 between the requirements and the activities and
31 sanctions, employment, earnings, job tenure, and cycling
32 between welfare and work.
33 (10) The study shall identify all sources and
34 amounts of reported household non-wage income and
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1 examine the influence of the sources and amounts of
2 non-wage non-welfare income on employment, earnings, job
3 tenure, and cycling between welfare and work.
4 (11) The study shall examine sanctions, including
5 child support enforcement and paternity establishment
6 sanctions, the reasons sanctions are threatened, the
7 number threatened, the number imposed, and the reasons
8 sanctions are not imposed or are ended, such as
9 cooperation achieved or good cause established.
10 (12) The study shall track the subjects' usage of
11 TANF benefits over the course of the lifetime 60-month
12 limit of TANF eligibility, including patterns of usage,
13 relationships between consecutive usage of large numbers
14 of months and other factors, status of all study subjects
15 with respect to the time limit as of each report,
16 characteristics of subjects exhausting the eligibility
17 limit, types of exceptions granted to the 60-month limit,
18 and numbers of cases within each type of exception.
19 (13) The study shall track subjects' participation
20 in other public systems, including the public schools,
21 the child welfare system, the criminal justice system,
22 homeless and food services, and others and attempt to
23 identify the positive or negative ripple effects in these
24 systems of welfare policies, systems, and procedures.
25 (f) The Department shall cooperate in any appropriate
26 study by an independent expert of the impact upon Illinois
27 resident non-citizens of the denial or termination of
28 assistance under the Supplemental Security Income, Food
29 Stamps, TANF, Medicaid, and Title XX social services programs
30 pursuant to the changes enacted in the federal Personal
31 Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
32 1996. The purpose of such a study must be to examine the
33 immediate and long-term effects on this population and on the
34 State of the denial or termination of these forms of
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1 assistance, including the impact on the individuals, the
2 alternate means they find to obtain support and care, and the
3 impact on state and local spending and human services
4 delivery systems. An appropriate study shall select a
5 statistically valid sample of persons denied or terminated
6 from each type of benefits and attempt to track them until
7 December 31, 2000. Any reports from the study received by
8 the Department shall be made available to the General
9 Assembly and the Governor upon request, and a final report
10 shall be submitted upon completion. These reports shall be
11 available to the public upon request.
12 (Source: P.A. 90-74, eff. 7-8-97.)