OXFORD
HILLS - Not every aspect of municipal government is terribly exciting. Not all town business brings a thrill to the
heart and a surge to the pulse. Much of
the work is actually quite mundane. One
such administrative necessity currently making the rounds — what one local town
manager referred to as "grunt work" — involves accepting state appendix
schedules of allowable maximum pay outs in General Assistance.
While
that, in itself, may not seem terribly exciting, the Advertiser-Democrat
decided to take this opportunity, while the issue was still fresh in the minds
of local town fathers, to investigate how general assistance — when towns help
residents meet emergency needs for basic living expenses — varies from town to
town.
What
we found was a divergence of opinion and philosophy regarding general
assistance that is as varied as the 18 municipalities in our coverage area.
General
assistance (GA) has its origins in the Elizabethan Poor Laws of England and, as
such, has been an obligation for every town in Maine since the state's entry
into the Union in 1820. These laws
required that each municipality provide for the indigent within their
borders.
In
some local towns where a board of selectmen/town meeting form of government persists,
such as a Sumner, the official title for selectmen still includes the archaic
addendum, "overseers of the poor."
Other towns, such as Buckfield, continue to hold property to this day
that was once used for "poor farms," where those without other means
of support could eek out their subsistence.
In
the early part of the 20th century, the burden of caring for the poor began to
shift from local to state and federal organizations. By the 1930s, local "overseers"
were no longer automatically responsible for the blind, the aged, for veterans
and their families, or, in some instances, the able-bodied unemployed. Other programs such as Social Security,
Workers' Compensation, Unemployment Compensation, Veterans' Administration, and
some of the Depression era work-related programs were developed to supplement
or replace local general assistance.
Today,
general Assistance is mainly used to meet emergency needs, such as when a
family runs out of oil, is threatened with disconnection of a utility, or faces
eviction, and has no immediate means to pay their bills.
When
this happens, the GA administrator will go through a worksheet of income and
expenses to determine what level of support the town can offer. In many instances, the first request for aid
is treated less stringently then subsequent requests. After that, more proof of expenses are
required, and certain demands can be made.
For example, the town can require that an applicant sell off certain
assets, or that they cannot own a vehicle valued at over $8,000.
Access
to a GA administrator must be made available 24 hours a day, and an answer to a
request for aid must be given by that administrator within 24 hours of the
application.
In
municipalities with a town manager form of government, that manager is usually
the GA administrator.
Exceptions
include Paris, where Sheila Giroux, administrative assistant for the police
department also handles general assistance applications. In Oxford, town clerk Ellen Morrison handles
those duties.
In
many of the smaller towns, the responsibility often falls to one of the
selectmen. However, in Minot, where Gregory
E. Gill was hired as the town's first professional administrator within the
last year, Selectman Eda Tripp still handles the general assistance claims.
Each
town appropriates a certain sum of money at town meeting each year for general
assistance requests. That sum ranges
from as little as $500 in Hartford, Stoneham, and Sumner, to as much as $40,000
in Norway.
Only
three towns in our area include in that appropriation the fees required for
administering the program. Waterford
pays John Anderson "around $350" per year, and that is reported to be
mostly for travel expenses. Anderson
also administers general assistance for Bridgeton. Mechanic Falls Town Manager Dana Lee stated
that his town generally spends "around $400" on administrative costs.
In
Norway, $7,500 is paid to Community Concepts for handling their general
assistance program. It is worth noting
that this fee alone is more than, and in some cases double, the entire annual
amount raised by some towns to assist the needy. (See sidebar: annual appropriations for
General Assistance, by town.)
All
applications for aid are kept strictly confidential and are not subject to
review. However, some information must
be released to the state, which annually audits each town's records, reimbursing
the town for as much as 50 percent of its expenditures.
And
while towns are required to help their residents meet emergency needs, assuming
certain eligibility criteria are met, the laws have been updated in more recent
years to place greater responsibility, and accountability, on the applicant.
It
is in how these eligibility rules are interpreted where we found our first
conflict
"It's
very rigid, and wide open, all at the same time," said Buckfield Town
Manager Glen Holmes. "You have to
do it. There are certain things that you
have to do, and yet the way each town interprets these regulations is wide
open."
While
many GA administrators were careful to say that they merely follow the law,
paying close attention to eligibility requirements, others, especially from the
smaller towns, tended to view their primary obligation as being to the
taxpayer.
"There
are circumstance were someone in just down on their luck," said West Paris
Town Manager Don Woodbury. "[But
some] are not doing all they can to help themselves. It bothers me to feed behavior."
"We
follow the law very strictly," said Lee.
"We do what we need to where eligibility requirements are met, but
we certainly aren't just giving it [financial assistance] away."
"I
think it's safe to say that we have to remember who pays the bills," said
Hartford Selectman Lee Holman.
"We're all taxpayers."
However,
both Lee and Holman pointed out that, in many cases, it is not a handout that
is required. Both cited situations in
which they have acted as a mediator between a local resident and a utility, or
oil company. And both felt that their
greatest contribution — one that cost the town no money — came in acting as an
advocate for the local person in need, pointing them to various programs that
they had not known to exist.
On
the other side of the scale, there are those GA administrators who believe that
eligibility requirements should be more liberally interpreted.
"I
tend to do a lot of it [review cases] with my heart, and not the head," said
Woodstock Town Manager Vern Maxfield.
"There
are times when it is better to deal with a problem up front, rather than deal
with a bigger problem later," said Poland Town Manager Richard Chick. "[It] makes sense to stretch
[eligibility] and get creative in dealing with a problem."
Chick
pointed out that it can cost taxpayers more to wait until electricity actually
gets shut off, when there can be a huge arrears in charges plus the addition of
reconnection fees.
In
general, we found that how a town interprets eligibility tended to correspond
to the amounts annually appropriated.
Those towns which set aside only a few thousand dollars were, on the
whole, more reluctant to part with any of it.
Those appropriating more than three or four thousand tended to be more
liberal. Larger towns, those expending
more than $10,000 were reluctant to betray any hint of their inclinations.
Towns
that annually raise less than $1,000 for general assistance also acknowledged
being more liberal with payouts. This
was partly, they said, because they get so few requests, and most of those
tended to be first, or one-time requests.
The
smaller towns, on average, tended to not have what the larger towns liked to
refer to as "repeat customers," or, "frequent fliers."
Another
trend noticed was that need did not necessarily follow population. Norway Town Manager David Holt theorized that
the real indicator was the number of rental units in a community. This observation was backed up by nearly
every single GA administrator we spoke to.
Smaller
towns, and certain medium sized ones, tended to have fewer requests, not
because they had fewer people, but because they have a smaller percentage of
homeowners.
Over
and over, a figure of "more than 80 percent" was cited by GA
administrators in regards to the number of applicants who either rented
apartments, or lots in trailer parks.
Several
administrators also pointed out that a town still cannot refuse requests once
it uses up everything that is has appropriated for general assistance.
“It’s
one of the very few accounts that you are allowed to overdraw if
necessary," said Holmes.
Here
again, however, the need to overdraw — to dip into a town's general fund —
tended to align with the number of rental units in a town.
Hartford,
a town with very few rental units, reported only using $40 of the funds it has
set aside last year for general assistance.
Lovell
Town Clerk Sherry Bais reported that her town has carried over it's $1,000 for
several years, with only one applicant in the last couple of years. And that person reportedly paid back some of
the assistance they received.
Although
recipients of town aid are, technically, obligated to pay back the money paid
to a creditor in their name, most towns report that few ever do.
When
a town does get reimbursed, it tends to come in the form of a lien on a lump
sum social security settlement. Several
administrators noted that it can take several months for the federal and state
governments to catch up to the newly disabled.
This forces that person to rely on town assistance until regular checks
begin to arrive.
"It
[social security] is a system that needs to be completely revamped," said
Lee.
Town's
can require that recipients of aid perform what is called workfair, requiring
the applicant to perform some service for the town, such as working at a transfer
station, filing in the town office, or shoveling snow.
However,
few towns in the area actually do require applicants to work in return for
aid. Although many administrators
thought it was a good idea, many, especially in the smaller towns, said they
simply had no work available for able-bodied applicants to perform.
But
perhaps the sharpest, and clearest divide among towns was in where they thought
responsibility for general assistance most properly resided.
In
many cases, the smaller towns preferred to keep aid on the local level. Many felt that applicants were more likely to
try and get off of aid when they knew it was coming from their friends and
neighbors. Others simply felt that
giving such aid on the local lever helped to preserve the human touch, so that
the needy did not become, "just a number."
"I
know locally, you tend to know people and have more concern for their
situations." said Greenwood Town manager Kim Sparks.
"It's
building community," said Holman.
"The state is the state. The
more things that can be handled at home, the better."
"You
have to meet with the person. You have
to relate to that person. You have to
take on a advocacy for that person who is having a crisis in their lives."
said Marianne Iggy-Morin, an administrative assistant in Otisfield, indicating
that this level of personal intervention would soon be forgotten if general
assistance was handled solely by the state.
Others
simply did not think that the state would do a very good job.
"A
lot of times, when I call headquarters [in Augusta], their attitude had been,
in my opinion, just horrible. Really out
of line," said Giroux, the GA administrator for Oxford.
She
cited one occasion, when she called Augusta for advice on a person who was
being asked to leave his residence, being told that "the police can pick
him up, then he'll have a place to stay."
"Looking
at everything the state does, it's always five times more costly than when we
do things locally," said Lee.
However,
many of the medium and large sized towns voiced a strong opinion that aid
programs would be more efficient if handled on a statewide level. Some believed that regionalizing general
assistance among several towns, or on the county level, would lead to
requirements being more uniformly applied, with fewer variances in
interpretations.
"There
would be a more consistent application of the rules of handled on a wider
geographic area," said Woodbury.
"I
would love to see it regionalized," said Chick. "In the course of processing general
assistance, I have to go to the state anyway.
If they were held to the same standard [to respond in 24 hours to
requests for aid,] if they had to be as nimble as they require us to be [it
would work.]"
"I'd
love to see it handled by the county, or at least in an area of four or five
towns together" said Maxfield.
"If somebody was doing it full time, they would be right up to date
on all the rules and regulations."
"I
think any time you can consolidate, that would be beneficial," said
Girioux, although she questioned how towns would get reimbursed by the state
under a regionalized plan.
"It's
not efficient to do it little town by little town by little town," said
Lee. "However, that being said, the cost of general assistance [if
regionalized] would skyrocket."
And
finally, it was noted that general assistance applicants tend to be younger people, even though under
the GA ordinances, parents are required to be financially responsible for their
children up to the age of 24. The older
generation, it was thought, simply shied away from asking for help. That was an attitude that also seemed to
predominate as potential applicants got out of the urban areas.
"This
is not Boston," said Stoneham Town Clerk Midge Sylvio, "People don't
run around with their hand out looking for money.
"I
have learned to have a major respect for rural people and how they live their
lives, and what they expect from government."
Annual appropriations for General Assistance, by town
TOWN 2004 GA 2000 Median Unemployment 2003
appropriation population* income* rate* mil rate**
Norway $40,000 4,611 $28,497 5.5% $19.00
Oxford 14,000 3,960 36,670 4.1 19.40
Paris 10,000 4,793 33,625 4.2 22.73
Poland 10,000 4,866 47,824 4.6 18.75
Harrison 8,000 2,315 35,478 3.4 13.35
Mechanic Falls 7,400 3,138 34,864 5.2 28.00
West Paris 5,000 1,722 30,000 5.5 15.70
Hebron 3,500 1,053 45,417 3.0 17.55
Waterford 3,000 1,443 31,458 3.7 14.25
Woodstock 3,000 1,307 35,642 7.7 15.30
Otisfield 2,500 1,560 43,304 6.2 17.7
Buckfield 2,000 1,723 36,821 2.6 20.10
Minot 1,000 2,248 47,557 3.7 16.50
Lovell 1,000 994 33,365 5.8 12.85
Greenwood 750 819 38,750 4.0 16.75
Hartford 500 963 36,488 4.9 17.20
Stoneham 500 271 38,611 8.0 11.30
Sumner 500 851 39,196 5.4 13.45
*Figures from US Census Bureau, based on 2000 census
** Figures from Maine State Planning Office
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