Backlog return unacceptable

Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, February 21, 2014.

State Rep. Donny Lambeth is absolutely correct in his comment on the state’s chronic problem with processing food-stamp applications.

“It is not acceptable to avert a crisis, and then let your guard down and soon find yourself back into a crisis,” Lambeth, a Forsyth Republican, said this week of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. “We must do better than that.”

DHHS and its embattled secretary, Dr. Aldona Wos, must do better than they have over the last several weeks. First DHHS ran an all-out effort to get within striking distance of a federally mandated fix to its food-stamp problems. DHHS was able to tell the federal government last week that it had met the first interim deadline for getting current.

But now, even taking last week’s bad weather into account, it appears the department has taken its foot off the gas and allowed an unacceptable backlog to begin to rebuild.

As the Journal’s Richard Carver reported, the backlog of untimely food-stamp applications and re-certifications is increasing again in Forsyth and for most of our neighboring counties.

Much is at stake in DHHS’s incompetent handling of the food stamp program.

First, of course, is the health and well being of disadvantaged North Carolinians who depend upon food stamps. These are some of the state’s poorest citizens, and without food stamps they often must subsist on an unhealthy bare minimum of food. The earlier backlog of delayed application approvals put great strains on the state’s food banks.

The second concern is that federal patience with Wos and her department may be running out. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has already threatened to cut off the $88 million it provides North Carolina to properly administer the food-stamp program. And the department faces one more challenge: It announced Wednesday that Anthony Vellucci, the director in charge of the statewide computer system designed to help social-service agencies determine eligibility for food stamps and other services, is leaving his job next month for the private sector.

Federal patience will certainly be tested when the USDA learns about the new backlog. It was only last week that Wos informed Washington that the state had met a Feb. 10 target date for reducing the previous backlog.

Today’s situation, as Lambeth said, is simply “not acceptable.”