AUGUSTA – In its nationwide rating of states’ efforts to implement welfare changes under a 1996 federal reform law, the conservative Washington-based Cato Institute has given Maine an F.

State officials and a representative of a Maine-based think tank, however, dismissed the ranking, countering that lawmakers and welfare administrators here just have a very different philosophy about what makes a good welfare program.

“Maine does not rank very well,” said Jennifer Ziegler, the Cato researcher who wrote the critical study. “Maine, unfortunately, failed consistently to implement the important policies that send the message of welfare reform.”

She criticized the state for not limiting how long welfare recipients can collect benefits, for not capping the size of a family benefit and for not adopting a requirement that a teenager must live with his or her family to get benefits.

The study established eight criteria that measured results and seven that measured structural reforms, assigning scores as to how well states fulfilled set standards for each criterion.

Ziegler said Maine ranked 48th in the nation for not adopting many of the restrictions on welfare benefits that states were allowed to employ under the reform legislation Congress passed in 1996.

But Maine does not “take a punitive approach towards the poor,” said Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Newell Auger. “We took the approach of investing in them.”

He described the Cato Institute as a conservative group that did the study to advance its own position that welfare reform has not worked and that it needs further federal restrictions to force states to adopt stricter policies.

“Welfare reform in Maine started in 1993 and has been very successful,” he said.

“Maine is not punishing anybody,” countered Ziegler. “It has the weakest sanctions program.”

While Congress encouraged states to cut off welfare payments after five years of benefits, she said, Maine has several loopholes that allow welfare recipients to continue to receive benefits long after that time has elapsed, and well after most other states would have cut off payments.

“Welfare should be a temporary solution, not a permanent lifestyle,” Ziegler said.

The Cato study also criticizes the Maine Center for Economic Policy in its report, calling the group a “liberal non-profit research organization” for its characterization of the welfare system in Maine as “compassionate and effective.” The state’s policies are neither, the Cato study says.

“Not everybody agrees with the Cato Institute as to what is a good welfare program,” said Christopher St. John, executive director of the Maine Center for Economic Policy. “They apply measures that appear to be from an ideological point of view rather than looking at evidence of what moves families to self-sufficiency.”

St. John argues that Maine’s program is providing what the principal welfare program has been named since 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. He said TANF has helped families hit with economic problems, while providing job training to help them find jobs.

“One measure where we did not do well in their study was in caseload numbers,” he said. “What happened was we did have significant reductions until the economy went bad, and then we had increases in the caseload because people lost jobs. Last hired, first fired.”

He said Maine lawmakers considered nearly all of the steps the Cato study wants states to adopt and rejected them, including one that would prevent a family on welfare from collecting additional benefits when the mother gives birth to another child.

St. John said Cato’s position was that withholding additional benefits would act as a deterrent and keep some women from having more children just to collect more aid. But he said Maine lawmakers rejected the provision, believing that withholding additional benefits from a mother who had another baby would hurt the child.

Ziegler said Maine has consistently failed to adopt polices that send a clear message to welfare recipients that the program is temporary and not meant to be a permanent substitute for a job. She said capping benefits to a family is one way “to send a clear message” that recipients should not look to the program for the long term.

“The most Maine ever does is to withhold a portion of a welfare benefit,” she said. “Maine fails to put its foot down and say if you are not going to play by the rules, you are not going to get any benefit.”

Ziegler also criticized the state-funded Parents as Scholars program. That program pays for as many as 2,000 participants to attend college for up to four years while getting cash welfare benefits without counting those benefits against the 60-month federal TANF limit.

“It is a worthwhile goal to have these parents go to college,” she said. “But it should not be part of a temporary welfare program.”

St. John disagreed. He said the program has been highly praised not for just moving welfare recipients off the welfare rolls, but also for providing them with an education that leads to good-paying jobs.

“This is the program [U.S.] Senator [Olympia] Snowe wants added to the national legislation because it works,” he said.

St. John said the criticism of Maine’s innovative program is an example of the major fault he finds with the Cato study. He said the study takes the facts and manipulates them to reflect a particular philosophy on welfare reform.

Ziegler accused the Maine Center for Economic Policy of doing the same thing.