Colorado’s welfare rolls dropped by nearly 23 percent last year, the first sustained decline in four years and a strong indicator the local economy is improving, state officials say.
The drop was even more pronounced in some of the state’s largest counties, such as Adams, where 27 percent of the welfare roll was pruned in 2006, according to the Colorado Department of Human Services.
The department oversees the $154 million Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which is funded mostly with federal dollars.
There were 11,368 TANF cases in Colorado at the end of 2006.
“I didn’t think I’d get a job that pays this well,” said Barbara Beacham, one of 3,354 people who left welfare behind last year.
Beacham’s customer service and sales job with vacuum cleaner company Oreck Corp. pays $9.50 an hour, with a package of benefits that kicks in next week – the first time she’s ever had them.
“I’d been on welfare since I was 18,” said the 23-year-old single mother of two. “Things just seemed easier last year to get off of it.”
Beacham got her job after taking life- skills classes with the nonprofit group Volunteers of America.
The declines in the rolls should help the state meet new federal rules requiring that a percentage of welfare recipients be involved in work-related activities or face financial sanctions, state welfare officials said.
“We didn’t anticipate the drop, and part of it is people are actively getting employment,” said Kevin Richards, director of CDHS’s office of self-sufficiency.
“Last year, we just didn’t know where the economy was going, and people don’t come to us when their financial problems begin – they come to us when they’re at their rope’s end,” Richards said.
The number of TANF cases normally rises and falls from month to month, but this is the first year-long drop since 2002.
The state has not received any reports from county officials indicating anyone left the welfare rolls because of immigration-reform laws passed last year, Richards said.
The laws were in part a reaction to perceptions that up to 50,000 illegal immigrants might be receiving benefits.
The number of welfare cases is important because the federal government uses it to determine how well states are implementing welfare reform.
Federal rules require half of all families on TANF – known as Colorado Works here – be employed or involved in a work-related activity. The percentage jumps to 90 percent for two-parent families.
In Colorado, the work and work-activity participation rate was only 35 percent in 2004 for all families.
If Colorado can’t meet the standard, the federal government will reduce the amount of welfare funds, requiring the state to make up the shortfall.
Colorado and many other states that haven’t met the work targets avoided the penalties by lowering public-assistance rolls from year to year.
Those cuts used to be measured against 1997 welfare rolls, and Colorado took advantage with drops sufficient to offset the work requirements.
Beginning this year, however, Congress requires caseload cuts to be compared with 2005 levels in order to get the credits, leaving many states scrambling for ways to cut their rolls.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that recent declines will continue and we’ll meet our federal targets,” CDHS spokeswoman Liz McDonough said.
Richards said county and state officials are working on new ways to increase work-participation rates.
“We don’t want to chase after the federal percentages on the backs of the needy. We want to serve them first,” he said.
Federal data for other states won’t be available until later this year.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
