HispanicBusiness

From outside an Orlando Starbucks, 45-year-old Rudy Roberts powers up his laptop computer and uses the free wireless Internet to apply for retail jobs.

Roberts, who has been out of work since the Kmart he managed closed in 2009, relies on $400 a week in state unemployment benefits -- money that he says stopped coming in September because of a bureaucratic hiccup. He applies for five jobs each week, he says, in order to comply with a requirement passed by the Florida Legislature.

"I understand why (lawmakers) want you to get out and apply," said Roberts, who traveled by bus from Orlando to Tallahassee last week to protest Medicaid cuts. "But I don't think they understand how difficult it really is."

While Florida's economy has shown signs of improvement in recent months, the prospects remain bleak for many of the state's most disadvantaged residents. And there is concern things may only get worse.

The Republican-led Legislature passed a series of sweeping changes last year and is considering additional changes in 2012 that lawmakers say protect taxpayer dollars, wean residents off government assistance and position businesses to reignite Florida's dormant economy.

Critics like Dorene Barker, legislative director with Florida Legal Services, say the measures amount to an "unprecedented attack on the poor" -- from requiring cash welfare recipients to first pass a drug test, to diverting Medicaid patients into managed care, to making it harder for people like Roberts to keep their unemployment benefits.

Barker's group, which provides legal help for the poor, is tracking about 300 bills that have the potential to impact the state's most needy, she said.

From year to year, "the number is pretty stable," she said. "It's just the severity of the issues, and the impact . . . that's what has changed the most."

Lawmakers last year made extensive adjustments to the way unemployed workers receive benefits. The changes, signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott, require welfare recipients to file an online report documenting their job search, shorten the window people can receive benefits by a minimum of three weeks, and make it easier for the state to deny claims based on potential misconduct. The result? Sixty-five percent of claims for unemployment benefits were denied within the first three months.

Another law required that cash welfare recipients pay for and pass a $30 drug test before they could receive benefits. A federal judge temporarily banned the practice as "unreasonable search and seizure" in October.

This year, lawmakers are pushing a measure that would ban people convicted of a drug crime from accessing temporary cash assistance or food stamps and another that would prohibit people using food stamps from buying junk food.

The drug crime bill would allow people to resume benefits once they have completed an addiction class. The bill has some traction in the Senate and has passed one committee in the House.

"We are not trying to do anything in particular to the poor other than make sure the tax dollars that go to programs that help the poor go exactly where they're supposed to go," said sponsor Rep. Jimmie Smith, R-Lecanto, who said food stamps helped provide for his family when he was first out of the military and working in pest control. "I'm living proof that assistance like that is a hand up, not a handout."