The DMN on the food stamp situation

It’s depressing reading these articles, but it’s important to do so, to really understand why we’re so screwed up. First and foremost, it’s an attitude problem. As in, the people who have the most power over it have the least concern about it.

Advocates for the poor and several Democratic state representatives say they welcome recent signs that President Barack Obama’s administration won’t tolerate the delays. Firmness will be needed to force Texas to finally fix the mess, they say.

Some state GOP leaders admit they were slow to see the onset of the eligibility-screening system’s latest crisis.

“It should not have been a surprise to me, but it was,” said Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, the Senate’s chief budget writer. “So I take responsibility for that.”

Last spring, lawmakers rejected the commission’s request for 822 additional workers to ease the backlog. Instead, they inserted a fall-back provision that would allow for that many new workers to be hired over two years, but only if Gov. Rick Perry and 10 key lawmakers who sit on the Legislative Budget Board grant permission.

In August, the commission asked to add 649 new workers. State leaders took seven weeks to act, approving only 250 new hires and stressing the commission should fill 400 vacancies first.

Eight House Democrats, including Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchía, called state leaders’ response “a disgrace.”

“It’s indicative of the governor’s unwillingness to address the serious performance issues” in the program, they wrote to federal food-stamp official William Ludwig.

Perry spokesman Chris Cutrone responded: “Our office is closely monitoring this issue, and we expect [the commission] to handle it in an efficient and timely manner.”

“Not that we’ll lift a finger to help them, of course. We’re too busy meddling in more profitable affairs to care about that,” he did not add.

Though federal program rules are complex, more than half of today’s 7,700 frontline workers have less than two years’ experience, compared with 8 percent five years ago. [William] Ludwig, Dallas-based regional administrator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, said recent departures of the state system’s three top executives haven’t helped.

To speed things up, he asked Texas to suspend fingerprint imaging of new applicants. He also urged that the state stop checking the value of applicants’ vehicles and their bank-account balances. And Ludwig urged that more interviews be conducted over the phone, not in person.

[Stephanie] Goodman, the state spokeswoman, said phone interviews are common, but “you still have to collect so much information it hasn’t been a big time-saver.”

I’ll bet it is for the interviewees, especially those who don’t have cars. That inability to empathize with those who need the help is the problem in a nutshell.

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