Court Opinion

ID: 9721019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:46:39.210369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:22.883185
License: Public Domain

KAUS, P. J.
I reluctantly concur in the result as applied to these particular plaintiffs. I feel, however, compelled to express certain reservations:
(1) As footnote 1 of the court’s opinion indicates, Prior Month Budgeting (PMB) does not go into effect until the third month after payments commence. Therefore, for the first two months of eligibility the recipient receives a full grant without deduction for additional income *915during either month. The federal requirement is that payments begin “with reasonable promptness . . . .” Obviously, if a state cannot recoup overpayments necessarily made because of the impossibility of making immediate payments that reflect additional income not yet in the hands of the recipient, the pressures to give an elastic interpretation to the “reasonable promptness” requirement may prove irresistible. Thus, while taking care of the problems of these plaintiff’s, the net effect of our opinion may not be beneficial to welfare recipients in general.
(2) Without expressly disagreeing, I wish to disassociate myself from the court’s discussions of Mrs. Garcia’s problems under the former regulation referring to “ . .. income ... actually available for current use on a regular basis . . . .” Quite arguably this regulation intended to withdraw from consideration only true windfalls, but not child support payments which should be regularly paid, even if they are not.
(3) If current law compels the result which we reach in this case—as I agree it does—I am not nearly as sanguine as the court that “the inherent inaccuracies in the concurrent month budgeting system . . . can be quickly adjusted through the provisions of Welfare and Institutions Code section 11004.” I suspect that the result of this opinion will not be a return to concurrent month budgeting but rather an attempt to scuttle, insofar as permissible, the present “pay now, recoup later” scheme.
A petition for a rehearing was denied December 15, 1976, and respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied February 3, 1977.