Last week, I told you of a letter from the USDA to the State regarding the abysmal condition of Milwaukee County’s Food Share program. I did note one bright note:
On the bright side, the letter did point out that the state appeared to poised to finally have worked its way through the backlog created by the county’s failure and the transition.
Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finally got around to reporting on this themselves:
The state has cleared a backlog of thousands of food stamp applicants it had last year, but federal officials are still warning that more progress is needed to improve the turnaround time for issuing benefits.
Wisconsin’s rate for issuing food assistance to the poor within 30 days dropped to about 82% by mid-2009, as the state struggled with a surge of applications in conjunction with the expansion of the state’s BadgerCare program. By September, the figure rose to nearly 87% – better but still not good enough.
Other Midwestern states, except Minnesota, had even lower figures for processing food aid applications on time. States are supposed to handle at least 95% of their food aid applications within a month, under federal guidelines.
This shows what can happen when you have a program that is adequately staffed. Even at that, the workers were putting in a lot of overtime to get the job done.
It is a shame that Scott Walker willfully failed to do his job in filling those positions like he should have. If Walker had done the right thing, it would have avoided a lot of people being denied or delayed their benefits, and it would have saved tax payers a lot of money.
Now if only the paper would get on the ball with the Eschweiler Buildings, which still has that big branch sticking out of its roof, two months after the storm that put it there.