New York City Mayor Repeals Welfare Reforms

[From article]
Mayor Bill de Blasio has tried to be cautious when it comes to policing. He worries that a crime spike will produce an angry citywide reaction that would threaten his political career. But when it comes to welfare reform, the other great advance of the Giuliani/Bloomberg years, de Blasio shows no such caution. He has turned the city’s massive Human Resources Administration over to former Legal Aid Society attorney Steven Banks, a leading “welfare rights” advocate, whose principal contribution over the years has been to tie up the city in litigation.
[. . .]
The newly created Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development proposes a vast new program of job training and enhanced “education,” on the theory that a new version of the old failure will reduce inequality in New York. De Blasio’s plan, notes former Giuliani welfare commissioner Jason Turner, “acknowledges that welfare skills training does not work—but then goes on to recommend a ‘new and improved’ version.”
[. . .]
Research from the Manhattan Institute’s Stephen Eide shows that, in the 12 months ending December 2014—corresponding with the mayor’s first year in office—the city’s welfare rolls added a net of more than 10,000 new recipients. The growth is even more alarming than the net figure suggests, since the numbers were still trending downward until May, when Banks was hired; since then, the rolls have grown by 13,000 (see chart).
[. . .]
The NIRA was dismantled when the Supreme Court struck it down as an unconstitutional extension of federal power. De Blasio’s gimcrack proposals may last longer, but they have no better chance of success.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_2_welfare-reform-reversal.html

FRED SIEGEL AND ROBERT DOAR
De Blasio’s Welfare-Reform Reversal
New York’s mayor is undoing a landmark public-policy achievement.
Spring 2015