The declining number of South Carolinians on welfare is good news on two fronts, since the decline in public assistance can be largely attributed to the gainful employment of many former recipients. A recent review of welfare reform in South Carolina for the past two years found the number of those receiving welfare fell nearly 6 percent.
From January 2002 until the end of last year, welfare rolls declined from 19,928 to 18,757. Meanwhile, more than 13,000 former welfare recipients gained full-time employment while 6,800 obtained part-time work.
Since welfare reform was undertaken by the Legislature in 1995, the change has been simply startling. There were 50,000 welfare recipients in South Carolina that year.
Despite a difficult economy, welfare reform appears to be accomplishing its goal of reducing dependency, particularly in the long term.
And most former public aid recipients contacted by the Legislative Audit Council reported "their lives were better since leaving welfare."
According to the LAC review, the Legislature's 1995 Family Independence Act has "transformed South Carolina's welfare system into a transitional program that places a strong emphasis on participants engaging in socially responsible behavior and becoming self-sufficient through employment and employment-related activities."
Welfare reform has limited the availability of benefits over a recipient's life, and requires those who receive welfare to undertake education or job-training programs to improve their capacity to become self-sufficient. While the review cited some barriers to participation -- primarily the lack of transportation -- the numbers show real progress.
Meanwhile, the agency responsible for administering the state's welfare program improved its own accountability for spending public funds as recommended by the Legislative Audit Council in 2002. The Department of Social Services has terminated most of the sole-source contracts valued at $15 million as recommended by the LAC.
The Audit Council then found that "DSS was not monitoring contractor compliance, and many of the contracts did not specify measurable, performance-based results. Also, all but one of the contracts were sole-source procurements and were not awarded based on competitive bids or proposals."
Those findings were sharply challenged by officials in the administration of then-Gov. Jim Hodges. They instead chose to portray the report as politically motivated, a baseless charge periodically leveled at the non-partisan auditing agency by politicians who aren't pleased with its findings. DSS is a Cabinet agency whose director is appointed by the governor.
The changes undertaken under Gov. Mark Sanford's administration by DSS Director Kim Aydlette have made for better performance and greater accountability and, incidentally, have served to vindicate the Audit Council's earlier recommendations for improvement.
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