The governor last Friday signed an emergency funding bill to help resolve the crisis-level backlog of food stamp applications from needy Alaskans. The Legislature had approved the measure days earlier.
The budget bill includes $3.1 million for overtime pay and to hire about 30 new employees to help with the applications backlog at the Division of Public Assistance, which processes food stamps and other benefits including Medicaid.
Deb Etheridge, the division’s director, told lawmakers that the end of the backlog that has affected at least 8,000 Alaskans beginning last September appears to be in sight.
“We anticipate we’ll be out of that backlog within two months, but we’ve seen a cascade of backlogs in all of our programs,” she told the Senate Finance Committee, which approved the supplemental budget. The full Senate approved the bill March 27; the House passed it on March 22.
Etheridge said the current backlog involves more than 2,000 cases.
Health Commissioner-designee Heidi Hedberg has estimated it will take until at least June to completely clear the backlog.
Processing the applications and distributing food stamps to Alaskans in need assumes the state will be able to quickly hire and train new employees. The monthslong backlog has been attributed to multiple factors, including staffing shortages and obsolete computer software that’s decades old.
Many have put much of the blame on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration cutting more than 100 public assistance division jobs in 2021, despite warnings about adequate staffing.
Alaska’s backlog is the worst in the western states, Jesus Mendoza Jr., who runs the regional U.S. Department of Agriculture office where he oversees food stamp programs, told Juneau public radio station KTOO.
“It is serious, it is very serious,” he said. “There’s a substantial number of Alaska citizens that are not getting benefits.”
Mendoza sent a letter in February to the Alaska Department of Health commissioner, asking that the state establish a plan to fix the backlog.
Juneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl said during the Finance Committee meeting that he hopes state public assistance officials will be forthcoming if the additional funding they receive is not enough to resolve the backlog as quickly as predicted.
“If they find this isn’t sufficient resources to get needy people the help they need they will come back,” Kiehl said.
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