None of the bonus money or savings will be used to reverse the 26 percent cut welfare recipients saw in their checks beginning in August.
Gov. Judy Martz announced Thursday, after the state learned of the $3.9 million bonus Wednesday, that $1 million of the $3.9 million federal bonus will go toward child-care programs for the working poor and $500,000 will be used to help low-income Montanans pay their winter heating bills.
The administrator of the Human and Community Services Division, which oversees state welfare, said he wouldn't have divvied up the bonus money any differently than Martz did.
"I think it's absolutely just the best way," Hank Hudson said Thursday.
Advocates for the poor and some lawmakers say the money should be used to reverse the 26 percent cut in cash benefits welfare recipients took in August.
Sen. John Cobb, R-Augusta, said it's ironic that the state got millions of dollars as a bonus for superior management of its welfare program, while at the same time, it cut more than $100 from the average recipient's monthly check.
"No good deed goes unpunished," Cobb said in a phone interview from his ranch Thursday.
Martz said her decisions on how to spend the money on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families are "wise."
"These funds - a bonus which is the result of teamwork from conscientious state employees, employment and training service contractors and TANF clients - are truly a godsend that will be used to provide a sense of peace for Montanans concerned about safely raising their children and keeping warm this winter," Martz said. "I think those are wise choices."
Hudson said placing the money into savings is a way to hedge against any future welfare cuts. He said the state might have prevented the August benefits cuts, or at least lessened their severity, if the program had a "rainy day" fund.
Cobb and others have a different take on the situation.
"Putting the money in savings kind of defeats the purpose of getting people off welfare," the senator said.
By spending the money now on welfare-to-work programs, several hundred of the 5,400 Montana families on welfare could be taken off, he said. He also questioned the need to save so much money when welfare caseloads are on the decline.
The number of families on welfare went from 6,185 families in July to 5,731 in August and dropped to 5,447 families in September. Hudson said the number of families on welfare typically drops in the summer, but added that this most recent drop exceeds the seasonal trend.
Despite declining caseloads, Hudson is not calling the larger-then-normal decline a trend yet. The state is only three months into a 24-month budget cycle, he said, and an adequate savings account is needed to guard against future years.
But putting the $2.5 million into savings isn't giving welfare recipients a fair shake, Cobb said.
"If you give people opportunity and job training, people will go off welfare," Cobb said. "They will do the right thing."
Other advocates, including Mary Caferro of Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, say the money should be used to reverse the August welfare cut that took $132 from the average Montana's monthly benefit, dropping the check for a family of three from $507 a month to $375.
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