Mark Greenberg, 43, is a senior staff attorney with the Washington-based Center for Law and Social Policy, a liberal advocacy group and think tank. The former legal-aid lawyer has been advising states and not-for-profit groups about how the new federal welfare law can be interpreted to make it less onerous for those who need public aid. His efforts have displeased some, including members of the Clinton administration.

The new law makes it more difficult for states to provide access to education and training programs for poor families, but there are still some significant opportunities to do so. The law makes it very easy for states to cut off assistance to needy families, but if a state wants to continue aiding families who need help, it should understand where it has the flexibility.

A: Under the new law, the state gets a block grant of federal funds. The law says a state may not use its federal funds to assist a family that has received federally funded assistance for 60 months. States can provide exceptions for up to 20 percent of their cases--perhaps for families in which a parent or child is disabled or in which a parent is working in a low-wage job. When a state thinks about the exceptions it wants to have, those exceptions might add up to more than 20 percent. The restrictions apply to family assistance covered by federal funds, but the federal time limit does not apply to months in which a family's assistance is funded with state dollars. So, if the state wants to develop exceptions for situations in which it does not want the time limit to apply, the state can.