Texas fined $3.96 million over food stamp errors

[sonias]

AAS 6/28/10
Texas fined $3.96 million over food stamp errors

Federal officials have fined Texas $3.96 million for errors in issuing food stamp benefits, according to a letter sent to House Speaker Joe Straus.

The penalty is for exceeding 105 percent of the national average rate of payment errors — overpayments or underpayments — for the past two federal budget years, according to the letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Texas plans to appeal the fine, said Geoff Wool, a spokesman for the state Health and Human Services Commission. He said that the number of food stamp recipients in Texas spiked after Hurricane Ike in 2008, increasing 26 percent in the year that followed.

(snip)

In addition to miscalculating benefits, the state has had trouble processing applications within the 30 days required by the federal government. To address an application backlog, the state has added hundreds of workers in recent months.

Perry and his crew blaming Katrina for their failures - you know the "act of God" excuse. The real failure is Perry and the Rs push to privatize everything that's a public program. The program was earning performance bonuses until the Rs messed with it. Fricking idiots! :mad:

[hobbit709]

1. They were screwing up long before Katrina

and they're still screwing up. Funny how the "Party of responsibility" always blames something else for their screwups.

It's like the time the warden of Ohio State Penitentiary blamed a prison riot on "Outside agitators"

[sonias]

2. It's only responsiblity for others

With the Republicans - it's always been "Do what I say, not what I do" kind of responsibility.

:eyes:

[sonias]

3. Feds fine Texas for food stamp failures

Off the Kuff blog 6/30/10
Feds fine Texas for food stamp failures
(snip)
It’s true that Hurricane Ike made a bad situation worse. But it was a bad situation to begin with because of the miserable failure privatization extravaganza that started in 2005 until its merciful death less than two years later. In the meantime, of course, the state had seen thousands of experienced HHSC employees leave the agency, which is the proximate cause of the staff shortages that led to the initial lawsuit over food stamp application processing delays. Ike was a factor, but without that screwed up experiment, HHSC would have been in much better shape to handle the increase in caseload that Ike helped cause. Rick Perry and his Republican cronies took something that was working, and they broke it. And the cost of that – the human cost, not just the dollars and cents cost – keeps mounting. And just as a reminder, one of the guys who helped screw things up in the first place has now been hired to un-screw them.

Well said Kuff, well said!

:toast:

[sonias]

4. Feds Fine Texas Over Food Stamps; Legal Aid Groups Say "We Told You So"

Hairballs blog Houston Press 6/28/10
Feds Fine Texas Over Food Stamps; Legal Aid Groups Say "We Told You So"

(snip)
Those mistakes include both underpaying and overpaying recipients, so it all works out, right? Texas says it will appeal the ruling, and says many of the mistakes were caused by disruptions from Hurricane Ike.

But to some legal-aid groups in the state, the mishandling of the program sounds like SOP.

"The federal government, in assessing it's almost $4 million fine, has acknowledged what our clients have experienced for years," said Martha Orozco, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid of Houston.

She said the state's Health and Human Services Commission's "bureaucracy is a nightmarish maze with obstacles at every turn that do nothing but frustrate the food stamp program's mission of serving as a safety net for poor people and providing food on the tables of hungry Texans."

:grr: