Confessions of a Wayward Academic

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Confessions of a Wayward Academic Page 11

by Tom Corbett


  One day, therefore, I sat down with Sherwood “Woody” Zink, the lead attorney for the Wisconsin child support program and other such programs. Neither one of us can recall when we first met, but we have remained good friends to this day. Woody is a memorable character. While he occasionally could be a bit irascible, he was always loquacious and very entertaining. Best of all, he was smart as a whip. He tended to think out loud, and to keep changing his mind as he worked through some problem. Deep down, Woody was a warm, big-hearted guy, and a fine attorney, almost becoming the first public attorney to become the president of the Wisconsin Bar. Even more important, he had a risk-taking personality and enjoyed interacting with the weird folk from the university; an almost incomprehensible lapse in judgment.

  On that day, it was clear that Woody was uncomfortable. We were setting about establishing this relationship for which no existing framework existed. In short, we were creating a contractual relationship. The problem in his mind was that he was an attorney negotiating with a non-attorney…me!

  The first thing he did was define a contract for me. Then we started. Soon, a negotiating pattern emerged. I would suggest a certain provision or idea for inclusion in the contract. His initial reaction typically was an emphatic, “We can’t do that.” I would lean back and say something like, “Well, I am not an attorney so maybe you can explain what the problem is here.” Then Woody would launch into a long monologue in which he eventually arrived at a point where that provision, or a slightly modified alternative, became acceptable. We would finally agree to that point and move on to the next, and the next, and the next. Some form of repetition of that basic script continued throughout the process.

  There were some sticky issues that remained at the end of the day. For example, proprietary ownership over project products took a while to settle. The “right” of the state to review and request changes also proved sticky, bumping up against the academic freedom principle. But we wanted this to work, and eventually settled on language we could sell to both sides of State Street. The framework we developed that day has worked for a long time. For many years, I would write extensions of the initial agreement by deleting, amending, or adding new substantive provisions. Best of all, Geno never went to jail.

  With a contract in hand, the work proceeded. We brought on board a marvelous group of students and faculty. One of the more memorable was Margo Melli, who sadly passed away last year. When she graduated from UW Law School, she was just one of a handful of females in her graduating class and in the law in general. She told me that the Law School Dean at the time told her that no top-level law firm would even consider hiring her. Females were not yet accepted within a male dominated legal profession. So, in due course, she became the first female faculty member of the Law School. Beyond being an expert in Family Law, she evidenced an unwavering commitment to children and an inner strength, which would be expected of the first female in any endeavor. But she also had a warm smile and generous laugh. She was a delight as a colleague.

  I will greatly abbreviate a long story here. To repeat, there were three main pushes to this project: (1) the Assured Child Support benefit or public guarantee; (2) the collection side of the equation or the Percentage Income and Asset Standard for setting awards along with the Automatic Wage-Withholding provision for collecting the awards; and (3) the creation of a large child support data set upon which to do the basic research needed to design current and future reforms.

  Ideally, we would have done the first two together, but that proved politically infeasible. Considerable progress, however, was made on the collection side. Those provisions contained less fiscal risk. The basic approach was to introduce the new provisions to first establish through our simplified formula and then collect awards through universal wage withholding in ten counties. We also picked ten matched counties to compare the outcomes on several measures of interest. Okay so far!

  Nothing, however, is as easy as it seems in the welfare world. Racine, an urban county located south of Milwaukee, was the first “experimental” county. To proceed, the county board had to agree to participate in this project. Since this was the first site, the “big guns” went to meet with the board, Irv Garfinkel and Tom Loftus; even though no real problems were anticipated. The way I heard it, the story went as follows. Word was spreading among the “father’s rights” groups that the state was on the verge of toughening up the child support system. Many of these fathers already felt aggrieved by a system they perceived as being stacked against them. Having talked with many of them over the years, I came to realize that their sense of being victims is real. Whether or not they have been treated unfairly in reality is quite another matter though I suspect some have been. Family court is not for the faint of heart.

  In any case, the fathers had gathered at a local drinking establishment to get ready for the board meeting. Let us just say that they were highly motivated and lubricated by the time the meeting started. After some agitation, the board decided that it would be highly prudent to table the motion for that night at least. The county sheriff approached Tom and Irv to ask if they would like a police escort out of town. When they responded that such a service would be unnecessary, the sheriff allegedly responded with, “Well, I think it is very necessary.” I missed that fun night but did chat with a few of these fathers who called IRP to complain about our research. Their anger often bordered on the palpable and could be frightening.

  After that stumble, things went much better as final design issues were settled and implemented. Not too long into the “experiment” (really a quasi-experimental design), a problem emerged. Word spread that the new policies were working miracles, child support collections were improving dramatically. Now there was no holding the tidal wave back. Other counties wanted to sign up, including some of our match counties.

  What experiment, they cried, when asked to wait until the evaluation had been completed? Who needs that when it is obvious the new policies worked? With Tom Loftus having risen to the position of majority leader in the State Assembly, it was only a matter of time before the percentage standard and wage withholding became statewide policies. Soon, they would be models for change across the country though the percentage standard would never quite survive in its original form.

  Remember that conversation with Irv at the IRP receptionist’s desk? Already, the child support world was changing. For Irv, however, the real prize was getting the Assured Benefit (AB) into place. He was worried, legitimately so, that the progress being made on the collections side of the ledger would make introducing the AB more problematic. The “savings” attributable to improved child support collections were already being realized. Given that child support collections had already been improved, the AB is likely to be viewed as a pure fiscal outlay.

  Still, much progress on the AB concept had been made even though many observers were highly skeptical. First, Wisconsin secured a waiver directly from Congress that enabled us to proceed toward turning the concept into an actual pilot program. We had several years in which to get it off the ground. Some bridges were burned in doing this. The then secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was furious that Wisconsin had done an end run around her domain. But we bravely marched on! A great deal of groundwork was done to refine the AB concept; find counties willing to try it, develop procedures and protocols for administering it, and even working on a computerized capability for managing the new program. Tom Loftus was able to secure state legislative authority to proceed on a trial basis.

  Moreover, we did go ahead and develop those large data sets we proposed as part of our original vision. We secured access to family court cases throughout the state and even to sealed court cases. Over the years, the IRP team was able to build longitudinal files and to integrate data on cases across programs. These data sets became a powerful analytic tool that fueled a better understanding of family dynamics, the child support system, and relate social programs. It supported many research projects and spawne
d numerous reform proposals over the years.

  Irv, however, kept his eye on his prized Assured Benefit concept; and we did continue to make progress. He was so committed to the idea that he briefly considered running for a State Assembly seat so that he could lobby for the concept from the inside. Sometimes, however, fate intervenes.

  In 1986, a pivotal Governor’s race took place. Tommy Thompson, longtime Republican member of the State Assembly, ran against Democrat Anthony Earl. Thompson was widely known as Dr. No, since he opposed so many new proposals as minority leader of the state legislature. At the time, the race was a classic left versus right contest though Thompson, by today’s Tea Party standards, would now be considered a wild-eyed, big spending liberal and Earl was far from a true Progressive.

  Welfare was a big campaign issue. You could feel that the dialogue around welfare was changing almost daily. Two academic books of the era exerted outsized impacts. Larry Mead, a New York University Political Scientist, wrote Beyond Entitlement. Charles Murray, ensconced in various conservative think tanks, soon published Losing Ground. Mead’s book essentially argued that the state should exercise normative control through the welfare system to encourage behaviors deemed appropriate. Murray’s work argued that the expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s had, in effect, led to a deterioration of conditions for the very people these programs purported to help.

  With Ronald Reagan in the White House, and with the overall cultural and intellectual climate swinging somewhat in a conservative direction, the timing seemed less than optimal for a new public income guarantee initiative. The 1986 Wisconsin gubernatorial election could well decide which way the future reform winds would blow in Wisconsin. Guess what, it did!

  CHAPTER 4

  THE WELFARE WARS: CRACKS IN THE SAFETY NET

  All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

  —Victor Hugo

  In January 1986, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseload in Wisconsin hit 100,000 cases, exactly that number. That would be its high-water mark. It was almost as if some deity had established that figure as the upper-level ceiling. Though a fraction less than half of all cases statewide were minority families, the welfare “problem” increasingly was considered an urban-Black phenomenon. As the caseload climbed during the early years of the ‘80s, a sense of crisis was attached to AFDC. This would prove a combustible issue just waiting to explode on the political scene. It did just that during the mid-decade Wisconsin gubernatorial race.

  Perhaps in anticipation, incumbent Governor Anthony Earl decided to establish a high-level State Expenditure Committee (SEC) to take a comprehensive look at state spending and revenues. It was the periodic exercise that involved a careful identification of budget items where cuts might be made without sacrificing essential services. One issue the committee would focus on was the dreaded welfare magnet concern. Were poor families pouring into Wisconsin to take advantage of the state’s generosity? Perhaps that in-migration explained the rapidly rising caseload. For example, while the welfare guarantee in our neighbor to the south (Illinois) was comparable to ours around 1970, by the early 1980s, Wisconsin paid considerably more. For many, Wisconsin had become a welfare magnet irrespective of the existence of any proof for that assertion.

  To be honest, many cheeseheads (as Wisconsin natives like to call themselves) do not take kindly to Illinois folk even when they came north as tourists to spread their cash around. They call them FIPs for F%&#ing Illinois People. Surely, they would not look kindly on poor Black migrant families from Chicago who allegedly bring with them crime, drugs, and all manner of social dysfunction. While such fears are undoubtedly exaggerated, perception is everything in welfare debates, the magnet issue being no exception.

  Numerous poor families were migrating to Wisconsin from the Delta area of Mississippi and other southern states. In some of those places, welfare guarantees were unconscionably low. If they fell any further, beneficiaries would have to pay the state for the privilege of being destitute. For example, to raise the welfare guarantee in Texas, you had to pass an amendment to the state constitution. You can imagine that did not happen very often. The sixty-four-dollar question remained, what really motivated the interstate relocation of poor families in the first instance. Economic theory, once again, was rather clear. Poor families would try to optimize their utility. That is, they would relocate to a more generous state, all other things being equal.

  The last phrase is the kicker. Clearly, there existed some obvious monetary transaction costs associated with residential relocations. It is not unreasonable to assume that a few other factors, some less easily monetized, are in play. Among these might be considered push factors and others would be defined as pull factors. Proximity to family, good schools, familiar cultural features, safe streets, economic opportunities, and so forth might also be brought into the picture. Imperfect knowledge about the comparative merits regarding where you now reside compared to available relocation options make relocation decisions very complex.

  In the welfare world, our priors tend to dominate reality. Many tend to take complex issues and oversimplify them. In an article I wrote in the early 1990s titled Child Poverty: Progress or Paralysis, I called this very human tendency “perceptual truncation.” In this context, welfare recipients are viewed through a limited lens. They tend to be defined as stick figures making one-dimensional decisions. They are motivated only by relative differences in welfare guarantees across states. Oh, state B pays more than state A? Which way to the Greyhound bus station?

  Of course, if this were totally true, all the recipients would have flocked to the highest paying state already, though that state surely would have responded by moderating its generosity to something more comparable to other states. Neither is it likely that the magnet effect plays no part in where poor families choose to live, economic theory could not be that far off base, at least I don’t believe that to be the case.

  The question has always been, are relocation decisions sufficiently determined by welfare differentials to warrant a public response? After all, many likely policy interventions would undoubtedly incur some costs for those legitimately in need, and not merely the greedy relocators. This issue had captured state officials back in the mid-1970s as Wisconsin became more generous than some of its neighbors. Sensing that this issue might have legs, Bernie Stumbras (of CRN fame in an earlier chapter) insisted that we put some migration-related questions on the new 37-page combined welfare application form back in the 1970s, at a time when we scrupulously tried to excise every superfluous item. His foresight proved beneficial to the study we were about to undertake.

  The appointed State Expenditure Committee wanted help with the magnet question. Opinion was divided as to the validity and strength of the phenomenon. And when in doubt, study it some more. This is a candy store counter where the origins of my involvement are a bit fuzzy. I may have been contacted directly by one of the usual suspects in state government, or the call may have come from Paul Voss, a demographer at UW. Paul was on the short side with a receding hairline and a smile that lit up his face. He is just one of those very nice people that do all kinds of volunteer work for good causes. That is, he is a stereotypical Madisonian…other Madisonians that is, not me. Doing good might require that I get off the couch. Such folk infuse me with guilt though that still doesn’t appear sufficient to move me off my slothful ways.

  I do recall going to Sheldon Danziger, IRP director at the time, to ask if he would consider a formal institutional involvement by IRP. I think he sensed the political thicket involved here and backed off quickly. I, on the other hand, would not see the onrushing train if it were three feet in front of me. In the end, his caution probably did not help. When things got messy down the line, IRP was tarnished to some extent since I was such a visible presence in the study…guilt by association. I will say one thing about the academy. No one tells you what you can or cannot do. They would even leave a low-l
ife like me alone. I was a true nonentity at the time (still no doctorate at this point though I might have been getting closer at long last). You have a lot of freedom to make all the mistakes you want, and I did just that with gusto. Even later, when I became involved in several kerfuffles with the governor and his people, no one from the university ever said a word to me. If anything, I felt protected even though I had no formal protection. Later, the dean of the School of Human Ecology made noises about offering me a tenured position largely because he thought me vulnerable. All quite remarkable now that I think back on it. It was like a large family of bear protecting a vulnerable cub.

  Paul and I, with the help of some graduate students, put together another of those multi-pronged data collection efforts. The data from the state’s CRN system was invaluable, particularly with Bernie’s prescient insistence that applicants for assistance be asked when they moved to Wisconsin, from where, and whether they had lived in the state earlier in life. We needed a ton more data than that though. We secured that through surveys and interviews designed to tap into the decision-making processes used by low-income families in making relocation decisions. Here I am, putting together another big data set. Why didn’t I exploit one of these for a doctoral dissertation? Excellent question! I think the lure of the next policy question always dominated my thinking. Alas, I am the wayward academic.

 

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