Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
Anne Murphy traveled to Evansville recently to hear complaints about the rollout of the Family and Social Services Administration welfare privatization project. Less than two weeks later, the newly appointed FSSA secretary put the project on hold.
Good for her. Murphy quickly acknowledged what her predecessor, Mitch Roob, would not: The new system does not serve Hoosiers well.
From its initial start in central Indiana, the system has put residents with disabilities, low-income families, older Hoosiers and others who depend on welfare benefits at risk. It has unnecessarily strained a social services safety net already under pressure from economic downturn.
Murphy’s call was the right one; it’s only regrettable that it comes after so many Hoosiers have suffered.
“The secretary has determined that we will not roll out the modernized welfare system to additional counties until FSSA is completely confident we can handle the volume that rolling out a new region would add,” FSSA spokeswoman Lauren Auld said in statement.
In 2007, state officials signed a $1.6 billion deal with IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services to move the welfare eligibility process from county offices, where it was overseen by caseworkers, to computer and telephone registration. Employees working for the vendors handle applications submitted through a Web site and call center based in Marion.
Problems surfaced almost immediately in the first 12 counties where the project began. They continued when 10 counties in northeast Indiana were added in May, and they’ve grown worse as the process spread to 59 counties. Lost paper-work, conflicting information and unreturned phone calls routinely combine to delay benefits for FSSA clients needing food stamp assistance, medical care and other vital services.
Murphy apparently was convinced by the stories she heard in Vanderburgh County about the rollout in southwest Indiana. Elizabeth Hornby told the FSSA secretary she applied for benefits as soon as she learned she was pregnant last spring; she finally received her Medicaid card two weeks after her son was born. Tosha Delliverni said her children lost their Medicaid coverage in the transition to the new system. Pat Grim, who lost part of her assistance, said she gave up trying after twice waiting all day for scheduled calls that never came.
Criticism of the new system was also leveled during a lengthy House Public Health Committee hearing Monday at the Statehouse, where lawmakers are considering a bill authored by Rep. Suzanne Crouch, R-Evansville, that would halt the privatization rollout until a legislative study committee reviewed it.
Crouch and Evansville Sen. Vaneta Becker, also a Republican, have led the charge for a halt to the automated process rollout. Their intervention and Murphy’s appointment obviously served to convince Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels. As recently as late December, the governor angrily responded to the legislative efforts with, “They better come here first, because we are not turning around from this very important reform.”
The governor’s mantra of fraud and errors may still ring true, but the previous problems certainly don’t seem so significant in light of the very real effects of the so-called modernization project. Lawmakers from his own party know it, social service providers know it, and Hoosiers whose lives and well-being depend on services know it.
It’s encouraging to see that the new FSSA secretary knows it and can convince the governor that pushing ahead with a flawed new system is the wrong thing to do.
