Texas To Hire 250 Food-Stamp Workers Amid Crunch

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Officials agreed to hire 250 workers to help process food-stamp applications at Texas’ overwhelmed public benefits agency after federal officials warned that the state’s funding could be cut off.

The Legislative Budget Board on Friday approved the hiring of some of the food stamp enrollment workers requested by the Health and Human Services Commission, which sought about 650 new workers.

The hiring will cost $11 million for the first year. There are now about 7,700 enrollment workers, said commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman.

The commission also was cleared to immediately fill 400 vacant jobs with workers who process both food stamps and Medicaid applications.

The budget board plans to evaluate whether up to 399 more workers are needed after the initial workers are hired.

Advocates for low-income families recently filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the state agency alleging more than a third of food-stamp applications languished beyond the one-month processing time required by law.

Some families wait months for food stamps.

“It is unacceptable to me that Texans who are eligible are waiting for food stamps only because of bureaucratic delays and staffing shortages that we can fix,” said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, co-chairman of the budget board.

William Ludwig, a regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, advised Texas officials in late September that unless the state speeds up its application processing, its federal funds will be at risk.

The commission must find ways “other than simply hiring more staff” to make application processing more efficient, budget board director John O’Brien told Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs in a letter that authorizes the hiring.

Celia Hagert, a senior policy analyst at the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, a group that tracks issues affecting modest-income Texans, is calling for more action.

“It’s just simply not enough to say, OK, you want 600, we’ll give you 250′ at a time when tens of thousands of families in Texas are going without the food assistance they need,” Hagert said.

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Information from:

Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com/

San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)