Ex-commerce official fesses up to welfare fraud

Newsday.com reports that a New Jersey public official faked a low-income status in order to collect benefits.

Lesly Devereaux was formerly second-in-command of the state Commerce Commission.

In a trial hearing on Oct. 26, The Associated Press reports, “She told the judge she applied for food stamps as a clerk-typist when she was really a private-practice lawyer. She collected about six months worth of benefits for children living in her home, which she’ll have to repay, lawyers said.”

The 49-year-old faces five to 10 years in prison when she’s sentenced in December.

She’ll also be disbarred and prohibited from holding any public-sector job in the state.

Oh, and Deveraux’s lawyer says she would’ve qualified for the benefits, had she not lied. The reason she made up her status? She was embarrassed.

It’s cases like this that bring the icky stereotype to light; women like Deveraux are the reason the welfare queen stereotype perpetuates. She would’ve been like every other person seeking extra assistance for a temporary hardship, but she was too proud to be humble.

Welfare royalty take their message to the stage

There’s a performance on the west coast that’s making royal what has historically been deemed irresponsible.

welfareQUEENS is a play that debuted last April in San Francisco, according to the website, Poor Magazine Online.

The play challenges the stereotyping of black and Latino single mothers lazily filling up welfare rolls to take care of their umpteen amount of children.

The play title is the latest social pun in a movement to reclaim words that have for so long degraded disenfranchised and voiceless populations. As blogger riffRag puts it,

Through intentional use of the highly problematic objectifying label/stereotype of ‘welfare queen’, originally coined by Ronald Reagan as an extremely derogatory reference to poor mothers who were receiving cash aid from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the welfare QUEENS project will re-contextualize the word and who it refers to in the framework of a post welfare reform, increasing stratified American society. This society makes it illegal to be poor; this society does not recognize, support or legitimize the “work” involved in raising children; and this society is quick to accuse poor mothers of the crime of being poor rather than recognize the heroism of their survival.

And the goal of the play isn’t to be preachy. The script was written by, and the cast staring have all been on welfare, or struggled as working poor. The team is headed by long-time Bay Area activist and journalist, Lisa Gray-Garcia, author of the memoir, Criminal of Poverty – Growing up Homeless in America.

Panel to discuss myth of the black welfare queen

The California State University’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality will host a forum on the the myth of the black welfare queen on Nov. 27. See the listing below for details.

The Myth of the Welfare Queen: Women of Color and Poverty in L.A.
This panel of welfare scholars and local activists explore women of color and poverty rates in Los Angeles, the effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it, and how “welfare to work” programs contribute to the cycle of poverty in the U.S.
When: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 5:00PM
Where: Salazar Hall C258
More Information: Call the Cross Cultural Centers at (323) 343-5001 for more information.

For those out there who attend, fill in us by having your say below.

Report updates status of state spending on children

A 1992 study by the Rockefeller Institute was updated earlier this month using the latest date compiled in 2004. The New York-based public policy group found that state and local spending per children grew from 34 percent between 1992 and 2004, accounting for inflation. State Funding for Children: Spending in 2004 and How it Changed From Earlier Years

State Spending

• Out of the $467 billion spent by state and local governments on major programs for children in the fiscal year 2004, about about 1 out of ten dollars supported programs like TANF, child care and other welfare services. The rest of those dollars went to education initiatives for grades K-12
• Spending on children under TANF accounted for $8 billion

TANF Spending Declines

• All other spending increased $0 per child, or 19 percent, reflecting strong growth in spending on child welfare program and earned income tax credit, offset in part by real per-child declines in spending on family assistance (TANF and related program).

According to the study, real per-child spending on rose a mere .2 percentage points in a decade, from 4.1 to 4.3. If a decline in TANF spending is meant to reflect states’ efforts to move more families off welfare and into full-time work, to where are those extra funds being allocated?

‘Tis the season to be scrooged: welfare office wants its money back

An editorial by a New Hampshire paper is bringing the scrooge spirit a little earlier than December this year.

The Concord Monitor Online wrote an Oct. 14 editorial blasting town officials in the community of Epsom for sending out letters reminding welfare recipients to pay back the state’s charitable giving — plus six percent interest.

Yes, ’tis the season for giving, and we mean give us back our money, contends the Monitor staff. Moreover, the paper specifically wagged a an editorial finger at Town Welfare Officer Lisa Cote.

Cote, who doesn’t seem to understand her obligations under the state’s Right to Know Law, declined to say how many welfare recipients were sent letters reminding them of the liens, how much is owed the town in aggregate, or how far back some of the debts go. Though the specifics of each welfare case are private, the rest of the information is not. Epsom residents, or anyone else who asks about them, should expect a timely answer.

The Monitor points out that the state law on repayment is optional, providing the recipient if financially able to repay. But once targeted, welfare recipients risk having a lien placed on their property if they don’t pay up, as the paper detailed in an Oct. 12 article, “Epsom wants welfare funds paid back.”

At least Cote won’t get coal in her stocking from one reader. She might call him the good guy in the story, pun intended. Guy Goodwin says he thinks the editorial was a personal attack on the welfare official.

Cote aside, why isn’t the welfare office more forthright with the list of people they mailed? If they are so adamant to recollect money, why not serve up the list of people they’ve assisted?

Working divorced mother Colleen Neely says applied for welfare 15 years ago to help out with her suddenly single-parent status. Are these mailings a scarlet letter to keep certain families out of Epsom?