Pa., N.J. have millions in stimulus aid for jobs

At a time when the nation's unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent and 14.8 million are unemployed, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are sitting on hundreds of millions of federal stimulus dollars that could be used to create jobs.

"We have $330 million and nothing has been done with it," said John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, an advocacy group. "We think we can use it to create 10,000 jobs at $10 an hour."

The money is part of a $5 billion emergency fund created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant.

TANF money typically funds welfare programs.

The TANF stimulus money also can be used for basic assistance to individuals, such as providing more food stamps, or for special one-time uses, such as reducing utility bills.

Some states, including Delaware, California, and Tennessee, have used TANF stimulus money to create programs that subsidize the salaries of employees hired by businesses, public agencies, and nonprofit groups.

But that has not happened in Pennsylvania or New Jersey - and there is a catch.

The money has to be used by Sept. 30, when the funding expires.

Pennsylvania is eligible for $359.7 million in TANF emergency funds and has drawn $29 million of that for short-term uses. Pennsylvania's December unemployment rate was 8.9 percent, the most recent statistic available from the U.S. Department of Labor.

New Jersey is eligible for $202 million and has drawn down two separate grants - each for about $3.6 million. New Jersey's unemployment rate in December was 10.1 percent.

In Delaware, where the December unemployment rate was 9 percent, the state drew down two separate grants - one for $2.7 million, the other for $3.4 million - out of a total allocation of $16.1 million.

Delaware is using $1.1 million for a subsidized job program. Among those hired were 21 people formerly on public assistance who now help handle paperwork for other people on public assistance.

"The advantage is that we are now developing a pipeline of people who will be very competitive" and qualified for future openings, said Elaine Archangelo, director of the Division of Social Services.

Officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey say plans to use the stimulus money are under way. In many states, these job-creation programs are joint efforts between state welfare departments, which get the federal money, and state labor departments, which have access to unemployed people through job centers.

"It's in the planning stages," said Suzanne Esterman, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services.

Complicating the planning in New Jersey is change resulting from a new governor. Although Esterman's department retained its leadership, the state's Department of Labor and Workforce Development has a new acting commissioner.

Esterman said a preliminary plan would use the money to subsidize paychecks for 500 public-assistance recipients who now are doing unpaid work for nonprofit agencies as a condition for receiving welfare. They would go off public assistance into the paid jobs with the hope that they would be kept on the payroll after the subsidy ended.

In Pennsylvania, discussions also are preliminary. Christopher Manlove, spokesman for the state's Department of Labor and Industry, deferred all questions to the Department of Public Welfare. The secretary of that department, Harriet Dichter, has been on the job for less than two months.

In a news conference at the Philadelphia Unemployment Project's Center City offices yesterday, Rep. Joe Sestak said he had introduced legislation in Washington to extend the money beyond Sept. 30. Sestak, a Democrat from Delaware County, is running for the U.S. Senate.

Sestak said his goal was to increase awareness of the money to push Harrisburg into action to devise a plan. "That $330 million is going to go away if we don't get thinking about it and acting on it."