FOOD STAMP ERRORS

With poor rankings for administering food stamps going back to 2004, the Baldacci administration had anticipated federal concern about the program by budgeting this year for 30 new employees for the state’s overworked food-stamp staff. Additional workers in this case seem like a good idea, but they are unlikely to answer all of the federal concern.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently followed up with Maine after inspections in ’04 and ’06 showed the state had the highest payment error rate in the country; at more than 10 percent, it was double the national average. Not coincidentally, its caseload of 800 to 850 clients per worker should be reduced to about 450 per worker, according to the federal report. The state’s eligibility system was designed for an even lower caseload rate than that.

The higher caseload has been a longstanding problem in Maine, where the number of people receiving food-stamp benefits increased from 101,000 in 2000 to 160,000 now. Part of this increase may be due to the state policy changes that sensibly streamlined receiving benefits such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps – residents who apply for one of these programs are screened for 21 of them. Part of the problem may also have been self-perpetuating – as the number of people enrolled grew, oversight of new applicants could have received fewer resources, a problem noted by federal officials, who also observed a failure to involve local workers in corrective action plans and inadequate tracking of corrections once errors have been discovered.

More specifically, the report concluded that Maine had made progress in some areas, such as reducing the percentage of times it denied benefits to qualified families, but has not improved the number of times it provides the federal benefit to those who do not qualify. In one-fifth of those cases, the state failed to act on reported information about the error.

Most of the errors pointed out by the report have been caused by the state trying to serve more people than its resources allowed, though there have been technical problems as well. The Department of Health and Human Services has provided the feds with several corrective actions it has taken and that it intends to take, including an on-line application and better sharing of information with child support services. As it makes these changes, it will need enough money and personnel to build high-quality systems and to test and repair those systems adequately.

The food stamp program is often all that stands between a family and hunger, keeping children in school by providing essential nutrition. But Maine cannot afford to continue to have food-stamp error rates as high as it does and maintain the public’s trust in the program. The problem is entirely repairable, but it will take more than simply adding personnel.