The director of the state agency that manages the food stamp program for tens of thousands of Alaskans says the staff is again overwhelmed with work, delaying benefits for thousands of households by months.
That’s months without the food assistance they need and that most are entitled to receive — all because the state has failed at its job for more than a year.
That’s months relying on friends, family, food banks, or just going without adequate nutrition. It’s not because they did anything wrong. It’s that the state failed to maintain sufficient staffing and failed to respond sooner with a stronger effort to a painfully obvious backlog of applications for food stamp benefits.
The problem started in the summer of 2022 and then got better after about a year of work before ballooning out of control again this fall. As of November, some people had been waiting since July for recertification of their eligibility to receive benefits.
The director of the Alaska Division of Public Assistance reports the agency is trying to fight the backlog on multiple fronts: Adding office hours; preparing a new online application process; recruiting and hiring more staff. That last one is the best answer but the most out of reach in the short term. The director says the division would need to immediately boost its staff count by 50% to get through the division’s entire backlog in a month.
As the chronically short-staffed state ferry system can attest, recruiting new employees is not only easier said than done, it’s just not easily or quickly done at all.
It seems there are two fixes if the state is to process the backlogged food stamp applications as quickly as possible and keep the problem from coming back.
First, the Division of Public Assistance — with full support from the governor’s office — needs to talk with every state agency across all of government to determine which state employees can be loaned for a few weeks or a couple of months to help process food stamp applications.
Yes, those employees will need some training, and, yes, stealing them from other agencies could cause work delays at their old jobs, but it’s time to spread the pain of delayed services so that the entire burden does not fall only on needy Alaskans.
Second, the state, meaning the Legislature with the full commitment of the governor, needs to take steps to boost the salaries of low-wage state jobs and restore an affordable retirement system to attract and retain public employees in Alaska.
There are worker shortages at the food stamp agency, the Alaska Marine Highway System, among Department of Transportation road crews, child support personnel, prison guards, even the state payroll office. An easier list might be which state agencies are not short-staffed. It’s time to spend the money and fill the jobs.
— Wrangell Sentinel
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