Legislative Budget Board nixes more HHSC staff; Texas warned it could lose federal food stamp funds- from TSEU

Legislative Budget Board nixes more HHSC staff; Texas warned it could lose federal food stamp funds

. . . The Legislative Budget Board (LBB) has turned down an HHSC request for funds to hire about 650 new eligibility workers the same week HHSC was warned of a possible cutoff of federal funds due to case delays.

. . . In a letter last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Regional Administrator William Ludwig warned Texas officials that future funding for the food stamp program (SNAP) could be suspended if the state does not comply with federal timeliness standards (95%). Currently, nearly 40% of applications are missing the deadline. Federal funding is essential to the SNAP program. Last year, the feds provided more than $3 billion of food stamps to eligible Texans.

. . . The stern USDA warning comes the same week that the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) denied a request from HHSC’s commissioner to hire about 650 state eligibility workers to help address application backlogs and processing errors. An LBB staffer sent an e-mail reading, “This notice is to inform you that the (staffing request) is disapproved. We will continue to work with you to further understand the agency’s needs and to address them in a timely manner.”

. . . The LBB decision seemingly ignores the crisis in HHSC eligibility programs. SNAP participation is up nearly 11% in the last year and the state’s ability to process cases has continued to decline. A class action lawsuit has been brought against HHSC on behalf of clients whose benefits have been delayed. “We’re working as hard as we can work but the volume of staff doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of the clients walking in the door,” said Lynn Moore, TSEU member and Region 8 Program Manager.

. . . Given the crisis in services, the LBB's decision is dead wrong. We need those additional staff right now to handle the flood of new clients and long-delayed cases. The LBB needs to approve HHSC’s request for new staff immediately.

. . . The increased number of applicants is not the only reason for the delays. Ongoing problems with the TIERS program, which processes cases slower than SAVERR, drag down local offices. Also, the state has continued to dump resources into the failed privatization project. Over $100 million per year is being spent on the Maximus contract for “eligibility support services”. Maximus receives over 15% of all eligibility funds, but the private company only does approximately 5% of all eligibility work. With the money being given to Maximus, HHSC could hire 1200-1600 additional caseworkers.

The services crisis has a solution. The LBB and HHSC need to put every available resource into rebuilding a functional eligibility system:

Hire and train at least 1000 new eligibility staff

Cancel the contract with Maximus and use the money being spent on the failed privatization plan to hire an additional thousand state workers.

Delay any further TIERS rollout (no new cases, regions, or programs) until TIERS operates as efficiently as SAVERR

WHAT TO DO NOW:

Call your state legislators in the House and Senate and ask them to tell the members of the Legislative Budget Board to approve HHSC’s request for 650 additional eligibility staff now. The over 38,000 SNAP applicants whose cases are currently overdue can’t afford for us to delay any longer.

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Off the Kuff speaks to the Feds Article- go comment!!  Click HERE   This post done through Yahoo! Mail. You can email me at hhscemployee@yahoo.com. Please know all emails are kept confidential, and your identity will never be disclosed.

Feds: Texas must speed up food stamp processing

Corrie MacLaggan
Austin American-Statesman
9/26/2009

Texas must process food stamp applications more quickly or risk losing federal funds, U.S. officials warned this week. This comes the same week as the state's Legislative Budget Board denied a request from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to hire about 650 state workers to help address application backlogs and processing errors.

"The current status of (food stamp) administration in Texas is unacceptable and actions must be taken immediately," says a letter to Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs from the U.S.
Agriculture Department's Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees the food stamp program.
The letter from William Ludwig, a food stamp regional administrator, says that the state is out of compliance with federal law. The federal government requires applications to be processed within 30 days, but the state is failing to process more than a third of applications by the deadline, according to state data. At the end of last month, 38,000 new applicants were waiting for approval even though the deadline had passed, state officials have said.

Celia Hagert of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which is an advocate for low- and middle-income Texans, called the federal letter "a warning sterner than we've ever seen before."
The letter says that commission officials must produce a corrective action plan within 60 days, and commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said the agency will work swiftly to do so.
"We do know that Texans do need and deserve better service now," Goodman said. About 2.8 million Texans are in the food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That's an increase of 11 percent compared with last year, and the economy-related surge comes as the agency is struggling with backlogs and errors. One in every six food stamp applications is incorrectly processed by state workers, according to state data. In some cases, that means eligible families are denied benefits.

"How disgusting that we find ourselves in this situation," said state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. "This pressure from the federal government should serve to motivate the state and the new commissioner to correct things."

Former Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins, who retired Aug. 31, told Gov. Rick Perry and the budget board in an Aug. 13 letter that hiring additional workers would reduce caseloads. That "would improve timeliness of case processing, and should improve quality and accuracy," Hawkins wrote. There are now about 7,700 enrollment workers and more than 300 vacancies, Goodman said.

Even if the requested workers were added and a similar number were hired in 2011, the state would have about 1,000 fewer enrollment workers than it did a decade ago, when caseloads were significantly lower, Hagert said.

Under a provision in the state budget, this week was the deadline for the budget board or the governor to answer Hawkins' request; if they had done nothing, the request would have been automatically approved.

In an e-mail Thursday, budget board senior analyst Melitta Berger wrote to commission officials: "This notice is to inform you that (the staffing request) is disapproved. We will continue to work with you to further understand the agency's needs and to address them in a timely manner."

The 10-member Legislative Budget Board is made up of the lieutenant governor, House speaker and members of the House and Senate.

Rich Parsons, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, said that the decision to deny the request was made by board staff members rather than elected officials and that Dewhurst's office is working with the commission on a plan for the food stamp enrollment system.

Parsons said that simply approving the new workers would not necessarily address the problems and that denying the request now will allow officials to come up with a plan.

Zaffirini, a budget board member, said she supports the commission's request for more staff and wishes that she had been able to weigh in on it.

Goodman called the e-mail "more of a clock-stopping move" than a denial. The request "could still be approved," Goodman said. "We're still working with (the budget board) and other leaders to make sure they have the information they need to fully analyze our request for more staff."

But Hagert called the e-mail "stunning" and said that not hiring now is unfair to families waiting for food stamps. "We have hundreds of thousands of Texans needing help affording food and caring for their families," said Hagert, a senior policy analyst at the center.

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Perry, declined to say whether the governor thinks the staffing request should be approved.

"This is an important issue that still needs to be addressed, and we'll continue to work with the leadership and the (budget board) on this," Cesinger said.

Backlog, processing errors bedevil food stamp program

Corrie MacLaggan
Austin American-Statesman
9/24/2009

Tens of thousands of Texas families are waiting as long as several months for food stamps as a surge in applications lands on an already strained system.

And when state workers do process the applications, they often do it wrong. One out of every six food stamp applications is incorrectly processed by state workers, according to state data. In some cases, that means eligible families are being denied benefits.

That error rate has skyrocketed since 2004, rising from 2.8 percent to 21.4 percent last year. For the first half of this year, the error rate fell to 17.4 percent.

This comes as Texas is struggling with a food stamp application backlog, failing to process more than a third of applications within the 30 days required by the federal government.

At the end of last month, 38,000 new applicants were still waiting for approval even though the federal deadline had passed, state officials said. Families sometimes wait three months for benefits, officials said.

It's also a problem for longtime recipients who must renew, such as Bexar County resident Mary Bidwell. After years of receiving food stamps, Bidwell was surprised when she didn't receive benefits in August, she said.

"It made me so mad, I couldn't go to sleep," said Bidwell, 67, a retiree who said she can't afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables without food stamps. "I thought, 'Well, hey, here comes the beans and tortillas again.' "

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said, "Right now, our focus is on reducing the backlog, but then we also know we have to tackle these error rate issues."

She attributed the errors to the lack of experienced staff - more than half of state enrollment workers, as of June, had less than two years' experience, compared with 8.4 percent in 2004 - and the pressure of an increased workload.

There are about 2.8 million Texans enrolled in the food stamps program, an increase of about 11 percent since last year. Benefits offices across Texas are struggling to answer and return calls about food stamps and other programs because of what Goodman said is "a combination of volume and really old phone lines."

The commission has asked Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislative Budget Board for permission to hire about 650 more workers.

"We've received their request, and our budget staff is analyzing it," said Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger. Goodman said that to cut down on errors, the state tried giving workers more time to process cases, but that wasn't practical because of the backlog. To address the timeliness problem, she said, the agency is making changes such as assigning senior employees who normally review others' work to process emergency food stamp cases.

In July, the commission was sued in U.S. District Court over the timeliness issue by the Texas Legal Services Center and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

The timeliness problem started several years ago when the agency lost workers in advance of an outsourcing effort. Goodman said the problem was complicated by a surge of applications following Hurricane Ike last year and another surge this year as the economy soured.
"We've been hit by a number of various kinds of storms, some literal, some figurative," Goodman said. Some advocates for low-income Texans say the food stamp program - now officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - is in a crisis that could have been avoided. Celia Hagert of the Center for Public Policy Priorities said the program is supposed to be readily available during an economic downturn. A family of four earning up to $2,915 a month might qualify for food stamps, Goodman said.

"The state has simply failed to administer it in a way that gets help to people who need it, and that was an entirely preventable situation," Hagert said.

She said the situation could have been avoided by keeping the agency adequately staffed. State Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, said Perry and the budget board should immediately approve the request, and he suggested that the state extend the food stamp enrollment period from six months to a year, which would not require legislative approval.

That's one of several possibilities that the commission is discussing with federal officials, Goodman said. "As stewards of taxpayer dollars," Naishtat said, "we need to make sure we're not spending taxpayers' money on a system that either does not or cannot perform as it should."
The backlog is especially large in the Dallas and Houston areas, where less than half the applications were processed on time in August. The Austin area did better - 87.8 percent of applications were processed on time that month - but didn't meet the federal standard of 95 percent.

Bidwell, who said her benefits dropped from $111 a month to $0 in August, e-mailed everyone she could think of - from the office of the San Antonio mayor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees food stamps. One of her e-mails ended: "HELP!!!!!"

A few days later, she said, her benefits were reinstated. She said she's relieved but worried about others who depend on food stamps.

"Worst comes to worst, I could go eat at my daughter's. I don't want to, but I probably could," she said. "Probably a lot of people are in worse shape than I am."

Hmmm?

Check this out....thoughts?   http://www.rfpdb.com/view/document/id/15897   ...The Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), State of Texas, invites all interested and qualified Proposers to submit proposals to provide Software Development and Technical Support Services for the maintenance and ongoing support of the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System (TIERS) for S... This post done through Yahoo! Mail. You can email me at hhscemployee@yahoo.com. Please know all emails are kept confidential, and your identity will never be disclosed.