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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ind. Gov't. - "Only one state, Indiana, refused to provide any answers on timeliness despite repeated phone and public records requests"

That quote is from a story today in the Panama City Florida News Herald, reported by Michelle Roberts of the AP, and headed "Millions forced to wait for food stamps benefits." A few quotes from the lengthy story:

A review by The Associated Press found that dozens of food-stamp programs in 39 states left at least a quarter of applicants waiting weeks or months for food aid, some in areas that were not particularly hard hit by the economic downturn.

Federal law requires applications for food stamps to be reviewed within 30 days of being filed, and even faster for the poorest families. Failure to do so can subject agencies to federal sanctions and lawsuits, but individual families are largely at the mercy of their local administrators.

Among the excuses for the delays were overburdened bureaucracies, staff shortages or program rules. But that makes little difference to parents with hungry children. * * *

To look at the effect of the recession on the program, the AP gathered monthly numbers of new applications processed and those that took longer than 30 days from every county or region within each state for fiscal year 2009, the first full fiscal year of the recession.

Not every state could provide the data requested by the AP, either because of outdated computer systems or because they do not track the number of applications processed. But 39 states and Washington, D.C., provided overall counts, and 36 states had county or regional data.

Only one state, Indiana, refused to provide any answers on timeliness despite repeated phone and public records requests.

[Kevin Cancannon, undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, which oversees food stamps] said in an interview with the AP that Indiana is "grossly behind" in processing food stamps after a botched effort to turn the program over to IBM Corp.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 10, 2010 10:35 AM
Posted to Indiana Government