AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Texas Health and Human Services Commission was already under federal scrutiny as it struggled to keep up with months-long delays distributing food benefits to millions of low-income Texans, who rely on this lifeline.
For more than a year, KXAN has investigated backlogs for Texans receiving federal food benefits through SNAP, which helps low-income households buy groceries.
Texas HHSC recently sent a 62-page “Corrective Action Plan” to the US Department of Agriculture detailing problems distributing funds through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which it oversees in Texas. The state agency, it turns out, has been under USDA monitoring for years — issues date to 2018 — and is subject to “periodic” updates” until they “are no longer needed,” HHSC spokesperson Jennifer Ruffcorn said.
States that repeatedly fail to meet federal timeliness requirements are subject to corrective action.
Last month, USDA officials visited HHSC, and other states. A spokesperson for HHSC said it “welcomed” what it described as a “technical assistance visit.” The stricter scrutiny comes after whistleblowers inside the agency sent letters to Gov. Greg Abbott and HHSC leaders saying SNAP applicants are waiting around 200 days to receive benefits. The federal standard is 30 days.
“With our current agency leadership, we are sailing the Titanic filled with our most vulnerable citizens into certain disaster!,” the anonymous “concerned staff” employees told KXAN.
KXAN asked HHSC how many SNAP applicants are currently waiting more than 30, 60, 90 and 180 days for assistance.
“Readily available application data is not separated in these increments,” said Ruffcorn.
Exterior of Texas Health and Human Services headquarters in Austin (KXAN Photo/Matt Grant)
Requiring ‘swift action’
HHSC said the USDA’s November visit to Texas was not part of an investigation or audit of its SNAP program.
“During the meeting, FNS stressed that the discussion was for collaboration and brainstorming solutions but was not corrective,” said Ruffcorn. “HHSC and FNS committed to taking back the items discussed and to continuing to work together on strategies to improve. We’re evaluating the takeaways and any policy, operational or process changes we can make, in addition to our immediate strategies to reduce the number of SNAP and Medicaid applications in the queue.”
The USDA told KXAN it is “deeply committed to ensuring low-income Americans receive the vital food assistance they need” through SNAP.
“FNS is working closely and consistently with states that have poor timeliness and requiring them to take swift action to ensure that they are meeting the timeliness requirements described in federal regulations,” a USDA spokesperson said. “We recognize that states are still facing many challenges and demands as they continue to recover from the strain of the pandemic, but we firmly believe that by working together we can improve the timeliness of SNAP application processing and enhance the overall efficiency of the program.”
The front page of the 62-page “Corrective Action Plan” submitted to USDA (Courtesy: Texas HHSC)
On Thanksgiving, Abbott told KXAN his office is also working with HHSC to “make sure that they fix any problems that’s causing any delays whatsoever.”
“We want to make sure that the people who are eligible for SNAP are going to be getting the food that they deserve,” said Abbott.
Findings
Some of the findings in HHSC’s recent Corrective Action Plan:
28.5% of SNAP applications weren’t processed in a timely manner (Oct. 2022-Sept. 2023)
There was a 49% “case and procedural error” rate processing SNAP applications (Oct. 2022-March 2023) compared to 40% percent (Oct. 2021-March 2023).
Payment error rates rose to 6.8% (Oct. 2022-March 2023). Based on a sample of 431 cases, 62 were found to be in error for overpayment, underpayment or paying people who weren’t eligible. That compares to 5.9% in the previous federal fiscal year (Oct. 2021-March 2022).
Wait times
KXAN has filed a public information request with HHSC to find out more about how long people are waiting for SNAP benefits. In the meantime, the agency provided the following information regarding wait times in October:
74% of SNAP applications were processed within 30 days.
87% of SNAP expedited applications were processed within the federal standard of seven days.
23 day average time to receive an eligibility determination for SNAP from the day the application was received.
In November:
As of Nov. 8, there were 280,909 Medicaid renewals that have not been completed since the beginning of the state’s unwinding period. The individuals continue to receive benefits until their renewal has been processed.
As of Nov. 27, there were approximately 150,000 Texas Works Medicaid applications over 45-day federal processing timeframes.
Medicaid applications took an average of 31 days to complete.
Fixes
“HHSC is moving aggressively to implement additional strategies to increase staffing capacity to reduce the number of SNAP applications in the queue,” said Ruffcorn. “The majority of those applications are people who are applying for SNAP and another benefit program, such as Medicaid or TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). This requires a worker who is trained in both programs to process the application.”
The agency blames the backlog on a federal requirement to re-determine Medicaid eligibility after pandemic-era protections ended this year, along with an increase in applications.
Some of the proposed fixes for next year, according to the state’s corrective plan, are the same ones it implemented more than three years ago and lists as “ongoing.” That includes training additional staff and requiring 20 hours of overtime per month.
There are other changes, some of which the governor’s office told us last week:
Moving 250 staff from other projects to focus on processing applications for SNAP and another benefit.
Within the next five months, it will send 600 new staff to Medicaid training. This will help process combined SNAP and Medicaid applications quicker, the agency said.
HHSC implemented workforce recruitment initiatives including job fairs, on-the-spot interviews at local offices, flexible work arrangements and pay raises.
Utilizing virtual training and standardizing on-the-job training to “promote accelerated readiness for independent casework.”
In August 2022, HHSC increased base salaries for clerks, eligibility advisors and supervisors. Frontline eligibility advisors received a 25% salary increase.
Last week, anonymous whistleblowers inside HHSC pushed back on some of those proposals, along with the governor’s office expectation they could cut the backlog “in half by the end of December.”
For one, measures like training 600 staff to process Medicaid applications could take more than two months to become “proficient enough to contribute to the backlog,” the whistleblowers told KXAN. Regarding moving 250 staff from other projects to just focus on SNAP, the employees say that is “misleading” because those staff members “have been working on the same backlog for months.”
“It mostly recites prior actions shown to be inadequate rather than new corrective initiatives,” said Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, about the recent action plan.
Doggett first told KXAN last week the USDA had visited Texas to look into lengthy delays. He was supposed to meet with USDA leadership this week to get an update That meeting had to be temporarily postponed, his office said.
“What’s long overdue,” Doggett said in a statement, “is a comprehensive plan with clearly articulated benchmarks that the state must meet and immediate adoption of every available tool to deliver relief quickly to families.”
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