Maine governor starving the poor

Kathryn Skelton, Sun Journal, ME - Last winter the state gave Lewiston a heads-up: 337 families were about to lose state welfare benefits.

Portland had 237, the second-highest number among all Maine cities, in the same boat.

Those families had nearly hit the state's new 60-month lifetime limit in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, exhausting [food stamp] benefits. They could apply for an extension or turn to the cities for general assistance.

In the past nine months, under new state law:

— TANF [food stamp program] has shed 26 percent of its caseload;

— Hundreds of immigrants have been dropped from MaineCare;

— More than 1,000 immigrants have been denied food stamps;

— And still to come: The state has not yet started drug-testing TANF recipients who have felony histories. It hasn't figured out how.

Advocates for the poor say the reforms have left some people confused and going without. The Governor's Office says there have been massive savings, with the TANF changes alone set to save millions. Cities say the state's savings are, in some cases, at their expense.

A January 2011 survey by the University of New England and the University of Maine found "nearly 90 percent of folks who were getting TANF for 60 months or longer were managing a disability within the family, either the parent themselves had a work-limiting disability or a child or another family member had a disability," said Merrill, a policy analyst with Maine Equal Justice Partners. "It's concerning that more people haven't applied for or received an extension, just based on what we know."