Charles Blain - president, Urban Reform Joins Houston Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're talking about giving money for nothing. I don't know
about the chicks for free, but money for nothing something.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Like twenty million dollars in federal funding, of course, and.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
They wouldn't want to lose that.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And when it runs out, well then Harris County taxpayers
will be on the hook for it.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Exactly. Nothing has changed with that, but evidently Harris County
is not giving up.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Charles Blaine probably has some good input on this.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm sure he does. He's President of Urban Reform. Well, yeah,
they got legal hurdles they have to get over, Charles.
How are they going to get over the legal hurdles.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, they haven't really explained how they're going to get
over them. They're just trying to sidestep them. Really. They
put a couple of provisions in this new proposal, simply
like giving debit cards that they can monitor and then
putting some guardrails on what people can spend it on.
And they hope that's going to help them avoid legal challenges.
But I just really don't see how this is going
to change anything.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
What they originally propose as whole uplift program, it was
found to be outside unlawful state law. Prohibits something like
this happening. So now they're trying to do an end run,
so will have to go back to court again.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well exactly, I mean in Harris's County, taxpayers are going
to be planned twice for it, right, because we had
to pay for the legal challenge both from the state
side and then from the defense side if you live
in Harris County. And then now we're going to go
through the same process again as the state is likely
going to challenge the legality of this, and I would
assume Harris County is going to put up a defense
and lose. And so it's ridiculous that we're going through

(01:22):
this yet again because they made some minor tweaks and
hopes that this will suddenly make it legal.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
What kind of changes do they make, do you know?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
So what they're saying is that they previously they were
going to give this money and they were just going
to give it via direct deposit and if you didn't
have a checking account, then you can get some sort
of like cash balance cards from the county. Now all
of the money is going to be distributed on to
a debit card. So it does give the county the
ability to see what people are spending on, and they're
also putting some balance, some guardrails in terms of what

(01:50):
they're allowed to spend it on, trying to restrict it
to basic needs. And so they're saying that if they
do that, that should bring them within the bounds of
the law and make it legal. I think they're trying
to make it more like a you know, a SNAP
or a WICK a food benefit program more than anything else.
But I still don't think that they're going to be
fully within the bounds. I mean, we've seen this happen,
and it's going to keep happening.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay. The thing that strikes me about that is there's
not a lot of guardrails on the SNAP program. There's
not a whole lot of things you can't buy. You know,
you may not be able to buy cigarettes, but that's
one of the few things, or maybe alcohol, but there's
very few things that you can't buy on that particular program.
So who do they have to satisfy the state or
the federal government when it comes to.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
That, Well, technically they're supposed to be satisfying the state
because I mean, as a jurisdiction of the state, Harris
County needs to be able to it is required to say,
within the bounds of state law, and so they have
to satisfy state law. And so yeah, I agree, the
SNAP program does not have a lot of guardrails. What
was crazy is that this program had even fewer. You
would think that that'd be hard to do, but it's crazy.

(02:49):
But so they're trying to satisfy state law so that
they can keep this program alive, and it's just I
don't think it's going to be possible because what state
law says is that you're not able to give out
a public benefit, a public good as just a gift
to a person. And we're still doing the same thing
because this was given through lottery where people signed up
and they were picked randomly if they, you know, adhere

(03:10):
to a number of requirements, and then we're just going
to be handing out without any sort of work requirement
or anything else. And there's still no checks and balances
in terms of limiting kind of how people are giving
feedback to the county on what they're doing. Now they
can look at what they're doing, but there's still no
further restrictions. I mean, it's still pretty free will and
deal in the same way that we saw with the
first iteration of the program.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
And basically they have to create a bureaucracy in order
to administer this program, and so we end up with
more bureaucracy on other people's money.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, just what we need, all right, Charles, thanks for Jodys,
appreciate it. That's the President of Urban Reform, Charles Blaine.
It is five poin fifty seven