By Regan McCarthy
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-984713.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – A new state law requires welfare recipients to pass a drug test. Regan McCarthy reports so far two percent of temporary cash assistance applicants have tested positive for drug use. Now some worry about what the means for the state's finances while others say the statistic helps disprove a stereotype about people who collect public assistance.
All Floridians applying for temporary cash assistance or TANF must first pass a drug test. Governor Rick Scott says the tests will help to ensure tax payer dollars are being used as they're intended.
"That money is supposed to be for the benefit of a child. That's what the welfare benefit is supposed to be for."
About 1-thousand Floridians have applied since the law was enacted in July. Department of Children and Families spokesman Joe Follick says the majority of the applicants passed. The state will pick up the tab for their tests. Those who don't pass the drug test have to cover the cost themselves and will have to wait a year before applying for assistance again. But Follick says since TANF money goes to families DCF tries to make sure children in families whose parents may have failed a test do get the money they need.
"We try to find a surrogate to receive the cash benefits for the children. So these are rough numbers, but if there was a family of three and they were receiving, let's say a single parent and two kids and they were receiving $180 a month. If the head of the household tested positive they can find someone else, usually a family member, who also would be subject to testing who could receive the remaining $120 or so dollars for the children."
Follick says a standard drug test costs an average of 30 dollars. The money a recipient receives from TANF varies. And nobody seems to be sure whether to state will wind up in the red or the black. Follick says DCF's budget hasn't been extended.
"The impact on our budget is negligible. And there might be savings, fiscally. I don't expect there to be any cost, certainly."
Republican State Representative Jimmie Smith of Lecanto sponsored the bill in the House. He says says he expects any costs that may be incurred because of the tests to be absorbed by the Federal grant the state receives to administer the program.
"We found that the program could financially handle that. It is a block grant that comes from congress and within that the monetary amount is there to handle that."
And Smith says the block grant gives the state the authority to require the tests. He says so far he says the program is doing what he'd hoped it would, though he says a perfect outcome would have been zero TANF applicants testing positive for drug use. He says he himself has some experience collecting public assistance dollars.
"I was retired from the military and in that my daughter was born and for a very short period of time, I was working like an $11 an hour job at that point. And with my military retirement it still wasn't enough. So I went on to wick. With the Wick program we stayed on a very short period of time. As soon as we no longer needed the assistance we didn't wait for it to run out, as soon as we didn't need it any longer we got off of it."
The testing program has drawn criticism from organizations like the Florida American Civil Liberties Union. Some worry it stigmatizes already marginalized members of society. But Smith says in his experience he wouldn't have minded being asked to take a test. As a past member of the military drug tests are nothing new for him.
"Our most honored people, our soldiers. You know, you look at law enforcement they get drug tested."
Some say the low percent of drug tests showing positive results may help to reverse a stereotype that paired welfare and drug use. DCF officials caution it's impossible to know who may not have applied for assistance because they knew they couldn't pass a drug test. About 15-hundred people are expected for apply for TANF each month.