TIERS: $425 Million, down the rat hole

Before reading the following articles, you should keep in mind that one of the primary reasons we were told that the old system had to be replaced was that it cost the tax payers $1.5 Million a year to maintain the old system. So to save that $1.5 Million, we have already blown $425 million, and still don't have a program that works as well as the old one does. And so in only 283 years, we should break even, and maybe by then TIERS will actually work.

Audit: $425 million system for social services worse than old one, tests find

08:47 AM CDT on Thursday, April 19, 2007
Associated Press

AUSTIN – The new social services computer system that the state has spent six years and $425 million developing is slower, less accurate and more difficult to use than the old system it is supposed to replace, according to an audit released Wednesday by the Health and Human Services Commission's inspector general.

The Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System, or TIERS, was supposed to improve access to state benefits by reducing operating and maintenance costs and improving the accuracy and timeliness of eligibility and benefit decisions. The system was implemented in Travis and Hays counties in 2003 and rolled out into Williamson County last year.

TIERS was paired with another new program that aimed to allow people to apply for benefits online, over the phone or by fax through the use of four new call centers run by a private contractor.

But the program was suspended, and the commission announced last month that it was ending the contract. On Wednesday, the commission defended TIERS, saying, "The new system works."

Inspector general Brian Flood's report included a test that found it took 45 minutes longer for experienced employees to process the case in TIERS than in the old system.


Report questions TIERS computer system
Health and Human Services chief defends system
By Corrie MacLaggan

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Thursday, April 19, 2007

A new report raises serious questions about whether a computer system used to determine eligibility for programs such as food stamps and Medicaid works.

State officials rebutted the findings in the report and maintained that the computer system, known as TIERS, does work. But they are delaying a planned statewide expansion because Texas failed to meet federal requirements.

This decision comes a year after Texas halted a statewide rollout of call centers to enroll low-income people into state programs and a month after state officials announced that they are canceling an $899 million contract with Accenture LLP to run the call centers, manage the Children's Health Insurance Program and maintain TIERS.

The report, released Wednesday, said the commission did not effectively manage the call center and computer system projects, which have cost taxpayers more than half a billion dollars.

The Health and Human Services Commission's inspector general, Brian Flood, recommended hiring an independent consultant to determine whether to fix TIERS, go back to the old system called SAVERR or choose another system. It takes at least 45 minutes longer to determine eligibility in TIERS than in SAVERR, Flood found.

Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins said Wednesday night that the report, requested a month ago by 30 of the state's 31 senators (except Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston) contains inaccuracies and represents an incomplete view of the situation.

Hawkins said that TIERS (which is pronounced "teers" and stands for Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System) works and that it's a vast improvement over SAVERR (System for Application, Verification, Eligibility, Referral and Reporting), the 35-year-old system lawmakers decided in 1999 to replace.

"Why anybody would think it's feasible to say disregard the expenditure of public funds and go back to an old system already determined to be inadequate is beyond my thinking," said Hawkins, who said that the Office of Inspector General did not interview him. "I think it would be horrible public policy."

[My inserted comments: It was horrible public policy to throw $425 million away, by contracting the program to a vendor, and then paying them the full amount before they had actually delivered a working program. It is not bad public policy to recognize that this waste has already occurred, and to use a system that actually works rather than continue to use one that doesn't in order to avoid recognizing that this waste has already occurred.]

TIERS is in operation in Travis, Hays and Williamson counties and was supposed to expand to seven more Central Texas counties this month and to the rest of the state by late 2008.

Hawkins said that the problems federal officials found with the program were issues with staff training, not technology.

"We have no reason to believe we won't be able to satisfy (the federal officials) with the information they need and the changes they request," said Deputy Executive Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein.

The report found that state officials let the new enrollment system go live in January 2006 even though Accenture informed the state that it would use a subcontractor's employees to manually enter data into TIERS because TIERS was not compatible with a software program used in the call centers.

Having those private employees — rather than seasoned state workers who understood state policy on eligibility — entering data about applicant income and employment into TIERS to determine eligibility was a major problem, said Michael Garbarino, deputy chief counsel of the Office of Inspector General.

Judy Lugo, president of the Texas State Employees Union, said after watching a presentation Garbarino made to Capitol staffers Wednesday afternoon: "This is what we've been saying all along."

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the agency thought it would work to have Accenture subcontractors entering data into TIERS, but that when the pilot in Travis and Hays began in January 2006, the system was overwhelmed with more applications than expected. Backlogs, along with problems attaching payment stubs and other documents to applications, led to thousands of Texans receiving benefits late. The system was supposed to save the state money, but the savings never materialized.

In April 2006, Hawkins indefinitely postponed statewide rollout of the areas served by the call centers, and last month, he announced that the commission would part ways with Accenture.

Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, who led the Senate effort to request the report, said he hopes the commission fixes TIERS rather than going back to SAVERR.

"I just want to get it working right," he said.

The House Committee on Human Services is expected to hear a report today from a subcommittee that has been studying TIERS and the centers.

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, said he will recommend that there be more legislative oversight of TIERS and the call centers and that the state not expand the use of either until the problems are fixed.

Herrero said he wants to "ensure that there's a system in place that is actually cost-effective, reliable, dependable and not causing anyone to lose the services they're qualified to receive."

A report by the Health and Human Services Commission's Office of Inspector General raises questions about a computer system, known as TIERS, which powers call centers to enroll low-income Texans into programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. Agency Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins responds.


Report: State officials made the decision to privatize the call centers using an analysis that relied only on pre-TIERS information, even though the commission had already decided that TIERS would be used in the call centers.

Hawkins: It is irrelevant because the decision on whether privatizing would be cost-effective would not have been affected by whether the system, TIERS, or the old system, SAVERR, was used.

Report: The commission decided to award the contract to Accenture — rather than the other bidder, IBM — by relying on a questionable evaluation tool.

Hawkins: The report fails to take into account that Accenture's bid was about $50 million lower.

Report: State officials let TIERS developer Deloitte hand over management of the system to Accenture in late 2005 even though TIERS had more than 500 deficiencies.

Hawkins: The number includes duplications and issues that had already been solved.

Bitter Sweet Vindication for Carlos Guerra

From the very start of the Accenture/HHSC Privitization debacle, there has been one voice in the media that had this whole thing pegged -- Carlos Guerra of the San Antonio Express. Those who were watching things unravel from the inside had at least some consolation that someone with a voice in the main stream media "got it". I heard later that he was getting some grief at his paper, because he wrote so frequently on the subject... and then unfortunately the frequency of his commentaries on this subject declined sharply. He now has a new piece in which he get's to tell everyone he was right. I am happy for him in that respect, though it is clear that he takes no delight in the fact that so many people had to be hurt before the powers that be finally decided to change course.

This whole disaster was not only preventable, and predictable -- it was predicted by many many voices, my own included.

Here is Carlos Guerra's op ed:

Carlos Guerra: A contract that failed miserably, taking 200,000 Texas kids with it

Web Posted: 03/14/2007 11:01 PM CDT

Express-News

Having first written in May 2003 about what was coming, I wasn't surprised Tuesday morning when Will Rogers of the Texas State Employees Union wrote to say that "Accenture and (the Texas Health and Human Services Commission) will jointly announce that the contract will be 'unraveled,' with each party 'going its own way.'"

Nor did I gag when HHSC and Accenture officials tried to put a positive spin on the dissolution of possibly the nation's largest contract to privatize a state's social services safety net.

I wasn't alone.

"I hate to say that I told them so, but I did — for four years," sighed state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio.

It began when the 2003 Legislature faced a $10 billion budget shortfall and the ideologues in charge were intent on rolling back taxes instead of raising any. So they opted to make up the shortfall largely on the backs of Texas' most vulnerable.

House Bill 2292 was a "reform" and "modernization" of Texas' health and human services safety net, they said, and it would save Texas hundreds of millions through privatization and by being more businesslike. After all, business does everything better than government.

A close reading of 132-page HB2292 revealed the massive reorganization of Texas' social services agencies really was a convenient cover for its more nefarious provisions.

Any real savings, I wrote then, will accrue from slashing or eliminating benefits, unconscionably stiffening eligibility standards and systematically making applying for benefits so frustrating that, needs notwithstanding, people will become discouraged and quit seeking benefits.

At the heart of HB2292 was authorization for HHSC to privatize enrollment for CHIP and Medicaid, and other critical safety net programs.

But a year later, HHSC insisted $177 million would be saved by contracting for four privately run centers to take applications by phone, fax or the Internet, and the firing of 3,377 of the state's 7,864 trained field workers and the shuttering of 217 of the 381 field offices.

Bermuda-based Accenture headed the consortium awarded the $899 million call center contract. But problems surfaced early on, such as interminable hold times and operators giving applicants incorrect information. Software broke down and documents were lost, some of which were inexplicably faxed to a Seattle warehouse.

The new system's roll-out repeatedly was postponed, the call centers' workers had to be retrained, and soon after the trained state workers started getting pink slips — by e-mail, no less — many had to be rehired.

"As (House) Government Reform chair, we had Accenture and HHSC testify, and they kept saying, 'It's getting better, everything is working great'" Uresti says, "when, obviously, that wasn't the truth, or 200,000 kids wouldn't have fallen off CHIP."

And it was shrinking CHIP rolls that set off the outcry that finally has resulted in Accenture getting the boot.

But that's hardly all that has gone wrong.

"This has done more damage to Texas than you can imagine," Uresti adds. "Everyone talks about CHIP and Medicaid because they recognize them; but this has also affected our seniors, our mentally retarded, our disabled, pregnant moms and on and on and on."

And aside from the human cost, this disaster may end up costing hundreds of millions after local indigent health-care costs are factored in.

But there also are lessons.

"We want to balance the budget, but you don't give out a $900 million contract — no company would — without having safeguards in place, without having performance measures and if they aren't met, we cancel the contract, instead of giving them more time," Uresti adds.

Details of what Texas will do now seem to be unknown.

But Uresti's characterization of this debacle is quite apt: "We put all our eggs in one basket, and they dropped the basket."

Senators Urge Accenture Call Center Contract Probe

You can read a shorter version of this story, with commentary from HHSC Employee, by clicking here.

Tyler Morning Telegraph: Senators Urge Call Center Contract Probe

From Staff, Wire Reports

Nearly every state senator has signed a letter asking the inspector general of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to investigate the failed contract with the company hired to privatize the state's social services eligibility system.

"There are significant questions concerning the contract, and the members of the Texas Senate want them answered," said Sen. Bob Deuell, who circulated the letter.

Deuell, a Republican from Greenville, said he also plans to ask the state auditor to look into the contract.

Sen. Kevin Eltife signed the letter.

"We should demand a full accounting of the Accenture contract," Eltife said. "This venture that was to save the taxpayers millions now looks to have costs taxpayers millions."

The commission announced Tuesday it was ending its contract with the Texas Access Alliance, a group of companies led by Accenture LLP. The letter was released Wednesday.

The consulting giant was hired in 2005 to - among other things - run a new computer system allowing Texans to apply for Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits over the phone, online or in person.

Problems plagued the project from the start, prompting more than a year of harsh rebukes from lawmakers, gubernatorial candidates and advocates for poor families. The commission announced plans to scale back the contract in December, but the two sides couldn't reach an agreement, Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins said.

The letter, signed by 30 of the 31 state senators, asks the inspector general to conduct an integrity review and, if warranted, a full-scale investigation of both the new computer system and the contract for running it.

Commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said the agency will provide any information that is requested.

"It's hard to imagine that there's a document in the building that hasn't already been provided to every losing candidate for governor, the employees union and IBM's attorneys, but we'll keep the copy machine warmed up and ready to go," she added.

The state's $899 million contract with Accenture was part of a massive effort to make it easier for people to apply for benefits.

The project as a whole was supposed to save the state nearly $650 million over five years. Hawkins said Wednesday he still expects the state to save money, but he could not estimate how much.

Accenture began running the new computer system in Travis and Hays counties a year ago and it was supposed to be implemented in all 254 Texas counties by the end of the year. But technical and operational problems forced Hawkins to indefinitely delay the rollout last spring.

Problems also cropped up when the Texas Access Alliance took over processing applications for the Children's Health Insurance Program, the state's low-cost health insurance program for the children of the working poor. Enrollment dipped below 300,000 for the first time since the program's infancy, but has since rebounded.

Advocates for poor families said contract workers lost CHIP applications and other paperwork, gave contradictory instructions about submitting information missing from their files and failed to credit payments to their accounts.

Democratic State Rep. Patrick Rose, who chairs the House human services committee, said his panel is committed to figuring out what went wrong with the Accenture contract and what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again.

Accenture Deal Dead

For those wondering why an Orthodox Priest cares about this news article, click here.

You should also check out Ramblings of an HHSC Employee Amidst Chaos, for some timely commentary on what is happening.

Texas terminating deal with main social services contractor

Medicaid, food stamp duties going back to state; official defends system, admits flaws

12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, March 14, 2007
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
rtgarrett@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Texas' rush to privatize eligibility screening for such programs as Medicaid and food stamps was dealt a huge blow Tuesday as the state announced that it would sever its relationship with the lead contractor.

State social services czar Albert Hawkins said protracted disagreements over money and changes to the private company's role persuaded him to end the state's five-year contract with the U.S. unit of Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd. more than three years early.

The contract had put Texas on track to be the first state to mostly privatize the process of determining residents' eligibility for social programs. But a pilot effort to combine contractors' screening of applicants for Medicaid, food stamps and welfare with the already-privatized Children's Health Insurance Program swiftly encountered turbulence in two Central Texas counties early last year.

Further rollout of the new system, which relies heavily on four privately run call centers, has been postponed repeatedly as applications and enrollment fees were lost and thousands of families complained of abruptly canceled health coverage for their children.

Mr. Hawkins insisted that the state will carefully assess whether to continue outsourcing some functions or pull most back into state government. But his move underscored the fact that the deal hasn't saved any of the $646 million that officials promised.

"The opportunity for savings is delayed until we get the model fully in place," he said. His confirmation by the Senate to a third two-year term as head of the Health and Human Services Commission has been held up, in part because of problems with the call centers.

For now, little will change for Texans applying for services. Mr. Hawkins said he expects the duties will be handed off by Nov. 1. A separate negotiation will now begin on how much the contractor will be paid. Through Feb. 28, the state had paid it $186 million, said a spokeswoman for Mr. Hawkins.


Looking ahead

Mr. Hawkins and Accenture spokesman Jim McAvoy dismissed suggestions that the new eligibility system's problems should curb state leaders' enthusiasm for outsourcing.

"I don't really think this is about privatization," Mr. Hawkins said. "It's about still moving forward and achieving the goals of transformation that we set out for our eligibility system," which he said hadn't changed much since the late 1960s.

Mr. McAvoy said, "This has less to say about privatization than about how difficult large [information technology] projects are."

Democrats and state employee groups, though, claimed vindication of their 2003 warnings that the privatization effort would fail – especially when combined with budget cuts and tighter eligibility rules in CHIP, the state-federal health insurance program for children in working-poor families.

"Far too many Texas parents have been left to depend on NyQuil and prayer for health insurance because their children were unfairly denied CHIP coverage," said state Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie. "Republicans have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on dysfunctional private call centers."

Ed Sills, spokesman for the Texas AFL-CIO, called outsourcing of sensitive government duties "an inherently flawed concept in which the public trust is traded for the corporate profit motive. The Accenture fiasco proved us right at every stage."

Mr. McAvoy responded: "We had problems with the initial pilot. We stabilized it."


Lawmakers' reactions

Republican leaders also played down the decision to end the Accenture contract.

House Speaker Tom Craddick said that while he expects Mr. Hawkins to fix problems in the new eligibility system, he still likes outsourcing.

"Privatizations in a lot of areas of government have been real positive, have done a lot of great services for us, saving dollars and allowing us to increase our benefits to different programs and facilities," said Mr. Craddick, a Republican who lured one of the call centers to his hometown of Midland.

Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, said she just wants a "user-friendly" system for poor people.

"Whether the state is performing the function or a vendor, the critical point is that we make it as convenient as possible for citizens to enroll in our state services and that we make the best possible use of online tools to help in that process," she said.

Rep. Patrick Rose, chairman of the House Human Services Committee, has asked Mr. Hawkins to testify Thursday about the project's past and future.

"The Legislature needs to pass legislation to prevent future mistakes," said Mr. Rose, D-Dripping Springs.

Mr. Hawkins said he had informed legislative budget writers he might need some extra state employees, depending on how much he decides to dial back the outsourcing.

Mr. Hawkins said he was not sure whether call centers would continue to be staffed by employees of Reston, Va.-based Maximus Inc. – an Accenture subcontractor – or by state workers.

He expressed confidence that after the state's review he would continue to hire private companies for a variety of technical support tasks, such as printing and mailing notices to aid recipients, and a Midland operation that copies and scans applicants' personal financial documents into computer systems.

However, Mr. Hawkins said, there would be a "direct trade-off" between spending on state employees and payments to contractors – and little if any impact on the budget.


Complex system

Advocates for poor families have said the state's original plan for outsourcing got rid of too many of the state eligibility workers who know the programs' differing and often very complex rules about who can qualify. Call center operators, who make between $12 and $15 an hour, initially didn't grasp many of the nuances. Most had to be retrained.

Mr. Hawkins said the whole idea was to test how much could be outsourced before going statewide with a new system.

"We didn't have it calibrated right," he acknowledged. "There needed to be more of those things retained by the state."

The tinkering has ended long times on hold and dropped calls, he said. But critics say it still takes far too long to process applications for Medicaid and food stamps.

In November, Williamson County entered the new system, joining Travis and Hays counties. A new rollout schedule announced Tuesday calls for 28 additional Central Texas counties to be added over the next five months, with Hill County the farthest north.

Mr. Hawkins said no state employees would be fired or demoted for miscalculating how much work should be privatized.

Mr. Hawkins said his agency and the Accenture-led group, the Texas Access Alliance, were unable to agree on financial terms and a revised division of labor that would be needed to carry out a handshake deal they announced in December.

Under that deal, state workers would perform certain functions originally envisioned for the private sector. Also, the state would slash the contract to $543 million, from $899 million. The Dec. 21 deal also called for the contract, originally for five years, to end in 2008 – two years early.

Staff writer Karen Brooks contributed to this report.

HHSC Reverses Course on Welfare Privatization

What do you do when you have to release a story that you don't want people to pay attention to? You release the week before Christmas. The following two articles tell the story, but in short, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is at long last raising the white flag on its privatization plan. For more on the background of this story, click here.

It will be very interesting to see what those who are responsible for these decisions will have to say for themselves in the next legislative session. What an incredible amount of human misery they have caused in the name of saving money... and in the end they have only thrown money down rat holes, and the price to the tax payers will be much higher than they ever needed to be. It will also take years for HHSC to get back to the level it was even a year ago.

Texas cuts contract on benefits
Janet Elliott
San Antonio Express-News Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Texas is drastically cutting a private contract for social services because of backlogs and errors in processing applications, state officials said Thursday.
The $899 million contract with Accenture to operate call centers to determine benefits eligibility will be reduced by $356 million and will end in 2008, two years early, said Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins.

Under the restructured contract, the Bermuda-based company will be largely relegated to data entry, leaving judgments about whether Texans qualify for food stamps, Medicaid and other welfare programs to state workers.

"We didn't draw the line between vendor work and state work in the right place," Hawkins said. "As we rebalance the roles between the state and the vendor, we will be drawing that line in a different place."

For example, if a client applying for benefits fails to list an asset such as a car, and a check of public data indicates a car is registered to the family, the situation now will be investigated by state employees, not Accenture workers.


Additionally, a planned expansion of Accenture-run call centers from two Central Texas counties to other areas of the state won't occur, Hawkins said.

The state will charge Accenture $30 million through service credits and payment discounts to recover costs incurred by the state, which has had to hire extra workers to process applications.

Accenture will retain more control over processing applications for the Children's Health Insurance Program, but state employees will handle all appeals of its decisions. Currently, clients denied benefits must first appeal to Accenture before going to the state.

Critics of privatization seized on the announced changes as evidence that the state's experiment had failed.

"They should have never (embarked on privatization) in the first place," said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. "I'm glad they woke up from whatever episode they were having."

No one should interpret the contract changes as a failure of privatization, said Accenture spokesman Jim McAvoy. "Some of the technology and business processes we tried to apply did not succeed. This is why you do a pilot to determine whether new structures will work."

He characterized the $30 million in service credits and discounts as "an accommodation," not a penalty.

The state's announcement was good news for state workers and groups that work with low-income Texans. Hawkins said 900 temporary positions in eligibility offices will be converted to full-time to stabilize the state work force.

"We're glad to see that HHSC is acknowledging that its call-center experiment didn't work," said Mike Gross, Texas State Employees Union vice president.

Gross said the commission should restore staffing levels at its local benefits offices to levels that existed before the contract was signed in June 2005.

Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin group that has advocated a more cautious approach to privatization, said Thursday's announcement served as a reminder that not all duties performed by state workers can be transferred to the private sector.

"There's a tremendous amount of expertise and skill in the public sector that the private sector could not replicate," he said.

Hawkins said the state eligibility workers for the most part are better trained and more experienced.

Neither of the authors of the 2003 privatization law, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, and former Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson, could be reached Thursday for comment.

Hawkins said the state will continue to convert 8 million food stamp, Medicaid and welfare cases to the state's new computer system, which has had its own problems.

A state audit last month said that failed interfaces between the computer and the HHSC's Office of Inspector General have left investigators unable to check for fraud and overpayments in benefit programs.

Hawkins said he thinks the computer program is working as expected and will serve as the "backbone" of the eligibility-screening system when it is in place statewide in 18 months.

Hawkins declined to comment on a decision by HHSC Inspector General Brian Flood to drop recipient fraud investigations and withdraw pending fraud cases in the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System pilot area.

He downplayed concerns raised by Flood that without electronic tools to ferret out potential fraud in food stamp, aid to needy families, or children's insurance coverage, the state would not know if fraud was being perpetrated and to what amount.


Houston Chronicle:
Dec. 24, 2006, 8:40PM
Undoing the damage
Texas Health and Human Services acknowledges the shortcomings of its privatization plan

When state officials negotiated a contract with private vendors to screen applicants for social service program eligibility, they made an expensive blunder. The privatization scheme caused thousands of recipients to be dropped from the rolls and did not produce the expected savings to taxpayers.

After repeatedly defending the $899 million deal with Accenture against criticism by legislators, Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and child advocates, Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins admitted the obvious. "We didn't draw the line between vendor work and state work in the right place," he said. "As we rebalance the roles between the state and the vendor, we will be drawing that line in a different place."

Accenture leads a consortium hired by the state to handle eligibility screening for Medicaid, food stamps, Children's Health Insurance and other state-managed assistance programs. Private workers at call centers were to replace state employees, but problems created application backlogs. Applicants complained that their documents were mishandled or lost. The Houston Chronicle documented one case in which dozens of applications, including confidential documents, were faxed in error to a Seattle storage warehouse.

Hawkins says his agency is slashing the Accenture contract by $356 million and the pact will be ended in 2008, two years earlier than previously planned. After previously telling state workers they would be laid off, HHS will now convert 900 temporary positions to full time. The state will also charge the contractor $30 million through service credits and payment discounts to recover the costs of rehiring state workers to process backlogged applications.

Unfortunately, Accenture will now handle eligibility screening for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which previously was conducted by a subcontractor, Maximus. Children's Defense Fund Texas Executive Director Barbara Best expressed concern that a privatization process that ended coverage for many children of low-income Texas families will still be handling CHIP applications.

The lesson of the Accenture debacle is that some state services, particularly those that provide a social safety net for the most vulnerable of Texans, should not be contracted out to companies more interested in amassing profits than serving needy citizens. The next time Commissioner Hawkins draws a line between public and private responsibilities, let's hope primary consideration is given for the people who depend on his agency for their health and welfare.

Privatized Welfare... Making it easier for the people?

...or just making it easier for private computers to steal tax dollars from Uncle Sucker?


HHSC Employee has a link to a blogger who talks about the new system from the perspective of one who is on the other side of the equation than the State employees who have been commenting on how bad the new system is. This is an important window and what a mess this new "customer friendly" system is, that supposedly was going to increase accessibility for those who need it.

As one who use to work in a state run call center that processed changes people report on their cases, I was incredulous to learn recently that those cases that are already completely in the new system (people in the Austin region, and those whose cases have already been converted to the hapless 300 million dollar computer system (that still doesn't work as well as the old system) who want to report a change on their case (such as that they are now working, or that their husband has returned to the home) are told that they must fill out a form to report the change. This form has to be mailed to them, or they can get one at their local state run office (which this new system is supposed to keep them out of, as much as possible... supposedly) -- however, experience has shown that when they ask for it to be mailed to them, they usually do not get it, and so end up back at the local office. Then they run into the problem of ensuring that this form is actually received by someone who will actually do anything about it. Mind you, they do not act on the change until this form is received... which means most changes are not being acted on at all.

In the state run call center, we would never have told a recipient to fill out a form for us to take the change. We always took the change over the phone, tried to verify the information over the phone if possible... and if not, we would send a letter requesting the information. One reason we always took the change over the phone is that we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to report their changes, because most people will not bother to try to report a change more than once, particularly if the change is likely to result in a reduction in benefits.

I would not argue that the old system was flawless. Occassionally people dropped the ball. But the difference was that people had a name and a face, they could come into the office, and ask why something had happened or not happened... they could speak to a supervisor if necessary, and at the end of the day, if we had made a mistake, we would fix it. In the new system, they have a first name and no face, and no one to talk to when there is a people, other than another faceless first name, who generally gives them the run around. At the end of the day, their cases are not getting fixed unless they call their state representatives. It literally takes an act of a congressional official to resolves these problems.

This new system is completely dysfunctional. It is not saving the state any money. It is not delivering increased customer service. It is not even delivering the same level of service that was being delivered before this new system was implemented.... which is why it has not been fully implemented. Nevertheless, the powers that be continue to refuse to cut their loses, and acknowledge that this system is a disaster.

This reminds me of some other examples of Bureaucratic Stupidity, in which corrections are not made until the disaster is complete.

How bad is it getting at HHSC?

According to my sources who are still on the inside, it continues to get worse every day. Timeliness is swirling down the toilet, and the corrective action plan is not to change course from an unworkable plan that is doomed to end in disaster, but to make staff take time away from their work to be retrained on Food Stamp timeliness policies... as if the problem was that people didn't know that applications should be worked in less than 5 months.

Also, staff have been working nearly every Saturday, just so as to have a day that they could wrap up cases without the phone ringing off the hook, and people waiting to see them in the lobby... however, it is now being suggested that they make working Saturday mandatory, and that they open up the office and schedule more appointments, thus eliminating the primary reason people have been working on Saturday voluntarily.

What people who have never actually worked cases do not understand (and these seem to be the people making all the decisions) is that you can interview people all day every day, and not certify a single case. To actually issue benefits, you need some time when you are not interviewing people in order to wrap those cases up, make sure that they are correct, and process them. Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels.

It seems that with the election cycle kicking into high gear in the near future, some people are getting nervous about how all of this will affect their chances of re-election. These "solutions" are non-solutions, that only result in giving the appearance of "doing something". It has long been the case that government agencies such as HHSC approach every problem with the assumption that there is no problem that training and a new report cannot fix. However, when you have a complete breakdown, such as we are now seeing, this is something like providing training to the crew of the Titanic on iceberg evasion, after the ship is already sinking. It may make some people feel better to know that someone is "doing something", but the "something" they are "doing" is a complete waste of time.

Also, with HHSC trying desperately to hang on to the staff they still have who actually know how to work a case, it seems a rather short sighted approach to burn those people out by insisting that they work 6 days a week, when this will obviously result in lower morale, more unplanned leave, and more people who simply find another place to work.

Personally, I thank God that I am no longer at HHSC, even though I often miss the way it used to be and the people I used to work with. Until they hit bottom, and start actually "doing something" to fix this problem, I can't see why anyone would want to stay that wasn't just hanging on to retire in the next year or two.

More HHSC Collapse Updates

Samm Almaguer talks about how they are now trying to hire more temps, for 6 months. Keep in mind, when I was hired, they took 6 months to train me before I was even sent to a field office to begin working on a reduced schedule... and it took another 6 months before I was really any where close to being up to speed as a case worker... and that is about the best that can be expected. This is window dressing, that will cost more money, but accomplish almost nothing.

The only temps that will be of any use will be former HHSC staff who need a job, and they will be the ones who are out of work at the moment, and so will be looking for something permanent elsewhere.

Foxes in the Chicken House

Note: My comments are those of a private citizen, and do not represent the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in any way.

I know it's Lent, and I should be focusing on more edifying and pious matters, but today there are several news items that cry out for comment.

The company in Colorado that designed their ill-fated computer program (CBMS) will ring a bell for those in HHSC in Texas -- it's EDS (Electronic Data Systems), which was the original contractor for the first phases of the TIERS system here in Texas (and has it's hands in other aspects of HHSC). Well now the Governor of Colorado wants a consulting firm to conduct an "independent review" of what went wrong with CBMS, and so whom does he choose? Deloitte & Touche... the same company that has the current TIERS contract in Texas.

Deloitte ought to know a lot about computer systems that cost hundreds of millions and don't work worth a hoot in hell, because they designed the one we have in Texas. The only thing that has thus far prevented Texas from experiencing the same disaster as Colorado is the fact that the State of Texas has kept TIERS in a pilot phase for years beyond the date that the whole system was supposed to have been rolled out to the whole state. It is very curious how three corporations keep turning up with their fingers in the government pie: EDS, Deloitte, and Accenture.

As they used to say in the Ginsu commercials.... "But wait, there's more!"

The Rocky Mountain News has some information on what the Colorado Legislature is being told about what they can expect from the CBMS system when and if it is finally fixed:

“Now, they say, they're just hoping that it someday will reach the efficiency of the old systems. "We'd be thrilled if it approached the reliability of the old system," said Boulder County Commissioner Tom Mayer. "This needs to be the highest priority issue in the state." Mayer, a software engineer, urged lawmakers to investigate whether EDS designed it in accordance with the original specifications or used shortcuts. "Inquiring minds would like to know." …But Arapahoe County Commissioner Susan Beckman estimates that if CBMS starts operating smoothly, her county's social services department still will need 25 percent more caseworkers than it did under the old system.”

So, citizens of Colorado… if you are lucky, you might eventually have a system that works as well as the old system… though it will take 25% more staff than it did before. And ye Citizens of Texas take note, because currently the people in charge of HHSC in Texas are under the impression that a similarly flawed system is going to be so efficient that they will be able to cut 57% of our staff and still produce at the same level as we currently do.

But wait! It gets even better yet.

Back home on the ranch, in Texas, we discovered today that Accenture had some inside connections that possibly helped them get their tentative contract to privatize much of HHSC:

“The commission (HHSC) announced on Feb. 25 that it had tentatively selected Accenture for the job. The Bermuda-based company has clients around the world and an office in Austin. …A week after the announcement, IBM filed its protest with the agency. Harris said state officials could not release specifics of the protest because IBM had stamped it proprietary and confidential. The agency likely will request an opinion from the attorney general's office, she said. "I think with the complexity and the size of a contract this large, and the significant overhaul that is being done with the eligibility system, it's not surprising that there are protests being made through our normal protest process," Harris said. The same day they received IBM's protest, state officials received the letter by Dukes and Turner. Dukes said she received her information anonymously.

"It is our understanding that Accenture bragged to another vendor that they obtained copies of (IBM's) proprietary technical architecture for the . . . proposal, and that Accenture's Tim Overend shared the architecture with a vendor, commenting that others were retaining the information on their computers," the letter reads.

Overend declined to comment when reached at his office Wednesday.

The letter also states that:

•Hazel Baylor, a contractor for Accenture, was the commission's deputy commissioner for planning, evaluation and project management in 2004 and had specific knowledge about the request for proposals.

•Gary Gumbert, the commission's chief information officer, was hired within the past year from Maximus, which has partnered with Accenture on the project proposal.

•Anne Sapp, a commission employee who had attended confidential vendor presentations as part of the agency's proposal evaluation team, is Baylor's housemate.

Attempts to contact Baylor at Accenture were unsuccessful. Gumbert deferred to the commission's spokeswoman, and Sapp did not return a telephone call.”

Anne Sapp is not just a commission employee, she was the Executive Deputy Commissioner of TDHS (prior to the consolidation) and in charge of the TIERS project, and you can see this (as well as Hazel Baylor’s old position) here.

But there is yet more…

Gregg Phillips, another person who has been playing on both sides of the table is also mentioned in todays San Antonio Express:

“Gregg Phillips, who was the No. 2 official at the state agency until last year and was a key figure in the plan to privatize many agency services, now does work for Deloitte Consulting in Dallas, which subcontracts for Accenture. He did not return a call left at his Dallas office.”

At this link, you can see when he was with HHSC, dealing with Deloitte from the other side of the table. And now we see that he is on the Deloitte side of the table.

It is also interesting that Gregg Phillips and was involved in Mississippi's Health and Human Services in the early 1990's, where Phillips spear-headed a disasterous downsizing that ultimately had to be cleaned up after he left. He then went to work for another private company that contracts with government Social Services agencies, before being hired by HHSC in Texas.

How is it possible that people can jump so freely from HHSC into jobs with the companies they dealt with while on the State’s payroll?

The State Law should be clear enough:

“Bidders must comply with State and federal laws and regulations relating to the hiring of former state employees (see e.g., Texas Government Code §572.054 and 45 C.F.R. §74.43). Such “revolving door” provisions generally restrict former agency heads from communicating with or appearing before the agency on certain matters for two years after leaving the agency. The revolving door provisions also restrict certain former employees from representing clients on matters that the employee participated in during state service or matters that were within the employees’ official responsibility.”

What a tangeld web of conflicting interests. The people who are depending on the services these agencies provide are the last on the list of priorities here. Second to last are the State Employees who are getting the shaft in this process.

A reporter’s career is waiting to be made by getting to the bottom of these billion dollar boondoggles (and I do mean “billion”… as they say, a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money).

Update: HHSC leader defends how contract was handled

If I had a Hammer: The Limits of Privatization

Note: My comments are those of a private citizen, and do not represent the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in any way.

Note also: If you are wondering why a priest is talking so much about the welfare system, see this post. Next week, Orthodox Lent begins, and so I will be blogging a lot less on this topic come monday next.

There is an old saying that if your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. This is certainly true with the privatizing government work to make government more efficient. It has almost become a fad, and one almost wonders if we will one day replace the military with mercenaries that work for a company traded on the Dow Jones Industrial.

I will readily agree that privatizing aspects of government business often makes sense. For example, if an agency has its own print shop, but there is a private printer who can do the same printing for less, it makes sense to privatize your printing. And that printer can do it for less because this is his business, and he knows how to do it efficiently, and he’s in it for his own profit which motivates him to find ways to be efficient. He can be innovative, and can readily change how he does business to find new ways to beat the competition.

However, when it comes to some aspects of government work, this simply does not work. One can find printers in the yellow pages, but one cannot find a for-profit company whose business it is to give people money, food, or medical care for free. There simply is no free market element to giving people stuff… for nothing -- which is what welfare is.

If the proposal was to contract with private charities, you might have something to work with, because the Salvation Army, for example, does have experience in giving people stuff for nothing, and doing it efficiently and effectively. But if you are going to leave the same rules in place that govern welfare programs today, there is no reason to believe that any entity is better suited to administer them than the people who are currently doing it. This is particularly true in Texas, were the Texas Department of Human services had one of the lowest error rates of any state in the country, and for 5 or 6 years straight received enhanced funding from the federal government as a reward for that level of accuracy (something no other large state had ever done). And the overhead cost in Texas are among the lowest in the country… it’s workers being among the lowest paid in the country.

A private company cannot be innovative when it comes to policy and procedures that are mandated by the State and Federal government. It would have to jump through the very same hoops. And what most people who have never actually worked with these programs often do not realize is that the policies are so complicated that it takes about 6 months before one can even begin to work these cases accurately, without someone constantly looking over their shoulder and checking their work. It takes about a year to begin to really work independently. And about another year before one has really been around the block, and knows how to handle just about any case that they might encounter. Private companies can only economize on staff – and given the low level of pay that already exists, there is not much room to economize. Paying their staff less, and providing them with even less job security and medical benefits will mean that they will have a higher turn over rate. Our agency already has a problem with high turn over simply due to the low pay and the high stress, which getting back to the time it takes to properly train someone to do the job right, means that at a certain point you are being penny smart, and pound stupid when you “economize” on their pay and benefits.

The part of our agency's work which has already been privatized (the Choices Program, which is the part of the agency that helps people find work) has a huge problem with turn over, and consequently has a high percentage of staff that do not know the policies pertinent to their work. In my job, I interact with these private contractors a great deal, and about a year ago had a problem with one of their workers who made an error, and when I spoke to that person’s supervisor I was told by the supervisor that she was new, and didn’t know the policy either. (Holy blind leading the blind, Batman!) I would also say that they have a much greater tendency to cut corners with policy, to do things that help them meet their numbers but cause their clientele to suffer needless (and often unfair) interruptions in benefits, and generally operate in ways that shift work back onto the state workers in HHSC than did their state employed predecessors prior to privatization.

In short, these private contractors owe an allegiance to making a profit, first and foremost – and while there is nothing wrong with a business making a profit, that is not why we have a welfare system. The number one goal needs to be to help the people we are asked by the government to help, and to give them the benefits that the government has determined that they should have based on their needs. If there is any other bottom line at work, then the eyes are on the wrong prize.

Why don’t we replace the military with mercenaries? Because we want soldiers who fight for the love of their country and aren’t in it just for the money – and who are answerable only to the government, which is answerable to the people. The reason why we should not have a for-profit corporation running welfare is because we should have people who want to help the needy of our country rather than people who want to make a profit off of the needy. We should want people who answer to our elected representatives, rather than to their stock holders.

What I would say to those lawmakers that are advocating privatization as a means of saving money is this: If you don’t like these programs, eliminate them. If they are too cumbersome, and you want less bureaucracy, then stop complicating them with the laws you pass, and simplify them. But if you want to keep these complicated programs in place, at the same benefit levels as we have today, then please properly fund the administration of these programs. When you cut staff, or have staff that don’t know what they are doing because you can’t find competent people who will work for the pay you are offering, or keep them when you do, this only results in greater fraud and abuse. It takes time, and knowledgeable staff to work a case accurately. It takes a lot less time and skill to simply give people what they want, and get them out of your office. We have to decide what we want, and then pony up the money needed to accomplish what we have decided to do.

For a recent example of Privatization gone bad see:

The St. Petersburg State: Reality pops state's privatization bubble

And

Convergys' star not dimmed by stumbles

And to read about Accenture (the Bermuda based company that stands to gain from the privatization of much of the Texas Health and Human Service Commission's work), see this page.

And also Accenture accensured

The Great Leap Forward, and Other Examples of Bureaucratic Stupidity

"Strike the Drum of the Great Leap Forward Ever Louder"
Having worked in bureaucracy for about 13 years now, as I have watched decisions come down from the top that were based on unrealistic expectations, divorced from the realities on the ground, I have often thought back on a documentary I once saw about Communist China’s Great Leap Forward. To make a long story short, Mao wanted to make China’s economy as powerful and as productive as the American economy, so he simply decreed that it would be so. He realized that to produce more manufactured goods, he need more factory workers manufacturing goods, and to get those workers he would need to take them from working on the farms. But he knew he would still need to feed those workers, so first off he decreed that food production would be doubled. The order came down the chain of command, and all the lower level bureaucrats were told that they had better make it so. Of course the means to achieve this goal were not provided, and in fact, the means were being reduced because labor was being redirected away from agriculture into manufacturing.

"The People's Communes are good"
This documentary showed a rally were a series of Commune leaders pledged how much more they would produce than they had the previous year. One would come forward and say “Commune number such and such will produce twice as many bushels of rice as last year.” Then the leader of another Commune would come forward, and pledge to do four times as much. All of this was greeted with loud applause, however, not much thought was given to how this was going to be done.

When the harvest came, all the bureaucrats sent up reports that made it appear as if they had in fact met their goals… but they hadn’t. But operating under the assumption that they had produced all this food, they could now concentrate more on building up their industrial/manufacturing capacity. So it was decreed that each city and village would produce x amount of manufactured goods, and so local officials around China made sure that it was so. All over china, little iron smelting furnaces appeared. To meet production quotas, quality iron goods were often melted down and made into worthless low quality metal that broke into pieces when it was used.

"Everybody is fully occupied in production, the Trade Sector is also fully occupied for everybody"
While all this was going on, the reality of food production started to catch up with those who had bought into the lies, and soon there was starvation all over China.

Likewise, in my time with what used to be known as the Texas Department of Human Services (now part of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission), I have seen on a smaller scale similar acts of bureaucratic insanity. For example, several years ago the idea was pushed that if we stopped doing one on one interviews with out clientele, and started doing group interviews of 30 to 50 cases at one time, we would save all sorts of time, and have more time to devote to other aspects of our business. There were problems of course. All of our offices were laid out with one on one interviews in mind, but since another region had done this successfully, and claimed that it saved them time, it was decreed that we too would follow this model. Supervisors, who were sold on the idea, believed that they could schedule twice the number of people in a week. And in fact, many people were interviewed very quickly, but after about a month I began to notice an increase of calls from people who were complaining because their case had not been processed. This continued to increase, and it became apparent that we were interviewing people faster than we were able to complete the cases. In fact, fewer cases were being processed than before, and gradually we were getting behind. Fortunately, the office that I worked at at the time had a manager who had sense enough to go back to the old system as soon as this became apparent, even though the orders were still that we should be doing it the new way. Our office went up to the edge of the cliff, and slowly back off. However, there was another office nearby that did not have such a manager. By the time something was done about it, the office literally had to be closed. Several months of cases were now backlogged, and it fell on other offices to clean up the mess that was left over the next several months.

Sometime after all of this, I remember hearing that a time study was done, and it was determined that even when done by people who were comfortable with doing group interviews, the amount of time that they actually saved was statistically insignificant. It just seemed like they were saving time because they rushed a bunch of people in and out of their offices at one time, and had more quiet time to do the follow up work on those cases.

Unfortunately, the new approach to doing our work that is being pushed through in Texas is likewise based on unproven premises that are not connected with reality. They believe that they will be able to do the same work with 57% less staff, thanks to the use of call centers and a new computer program that still isn’t working properly and takes longer to actually use than the old program. There is every indication that they are charging ahead with this plan, despite what we see unfolding in Colorado. In the aforementioned minor implosion, there were reserves that did not implode that were able to pick up the pieces. In the proposed model, if it implodes, there will be no unaffected parts of the agency.

Here is what's in just today's news about the ongoing mess in Colorado:

1. Nearly 1,000 Emergency Welfare Cases Still Unresolved:

"Nearly 1,000 calls for urgent state welfare or Medicaid benefits following problems with the state's new computer system remain unresolved according to a report issued by the state Monday. The computer system, the subject of a lawsuit filed in Denver court, has been blamed for causing a backlog of nearly 30,000 people waiting to find out if they can receive benefits.... The $200 million Colorado Benefits Management System went online Sept. 1 even though county workers had complained of glitches. The Colorado Center on Law Policy sued the state after the system was blamed for delaying payments to thousands of residents receiving benefits and keeping cases from being processed."

2. Online welfare system still needs helping hand:

"Six months after Colorado's brand-new welfare benefits system went online, county workers and benefit recipients are still throwing up their hands in disgust. The system has been fraught with errors since its birthday, Sept. 1, 2004. Part of the problem, county officials and Weld County residents said, is that the state didn't test the system first. Denver District Judge John Coughlin set a Monday deadline for the state to slash the thousands of new cases that have backlogged since the Colorado Benefits Management System went live. Counties were ordered to complete applications for 40 percent of that backlog, nearly 30,000 cases statewide. Monday afternoon, Weld officials were confident they met the judge's requirement. But they were less confident the system will be fixed anytime soon.... They thought kinks would be ironed out with training and a better understanding of the computer program. But the longer the system is in use, the clearer it becomes that most problems are the system's fault, Griego said. For one thing, the system doesn't share information properly among various welfare programs, which was the primary reason for its creation....

Debbie Allmer, who lives in La Salle and has custody of her two young grandchildren, said she doesn't want excuses. She applied for food stamps in August and qualified, but it took until mid-December before she received any benefit. When Allmer asked for back food stamps to cover the previous months, she was told she'd receive $12 for each month. Then, a month later, she got a letter in the mail saying her benefit would drop to $2. "I don't care if your computer is screwed up," she said. "We'd kind of like to eat." Finally, the social services department solved the problem and now Allmer receives $170 a month in food stamps. Allmer isn't alone. The system is using up reams of paper to notify people who receive benefits. Often, recipients get the same notice multiple times, or the notices are incorrect...."

3). Counties fear big bill: Food stamp woes could leave them liable for millions:

"Colorado counties are so nervous they'll be billed for millions of dollars in food stamp overpayments that they've asked attorneys and social services directors to look at their options. "We've been extremely worried about the mounting costs of overpayments," said Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc. "We have a growing lack of confidence that the state is going to find ways to hold us harmless." The overpayments began after the start last fall of the Colorado Benefits Management System, the state's troubled new computer that determines eligibility for welfare benefits. As food stamp applications were delayed and renewals bogged down, the state Department of Human Services announced that no families would be booted from the program while their cases were in limbo. That provided a safety net, but it also keeps people on food stamps whose circumstances might have improved. Every month, some 3 percent to 5 percent of people on food stamps become no longer eligible. At roughly $290 a month per family, and with some 100,000 households getting food stamps every month, county officials are worried that the overpayments can reach into the millions of dollars statewide....

4. Number in county needing help jumps:

"...While the number of county residents in need grows, a new system meant to ease the workload for human-services employees and streamline the benefits process instead has hindered the system. Six months ago the state brought online a new computer system to improve the benefits system aiding employees who assist clients. However, La Plata County's human services employees have been overwhelmed, Pat Carlson, La Plata County's director of human services, said during the county commissioners' meeting on Monday. "We have one case worker handling most of the cases," Carlson said. "It is clear we don't have enough staff." Temporary employees were hired to help with the conversion to the new Colorado Benefits Management System that was initiated in September, Carlson said.... Before the Colorado Benefits Management System was initiated, processing a new food stamps case took 20 minutes. Now it takes more than an hour to complete. Carlson is considering asking the county commissioners to allow her to hire additional employees. "We feel like we are fighting an uphill battle," Carlson said...."

See also Off the Kuff's comments on this.

Let them eat Spam (What's Wrong With Welfare, Part II)

This is Part II of a series. Click here to read Part I.

There are a number of practical issues about how Food Stamps, TANF, and Medicaid are being administered, that I will begin to deal with in my next post, but before I get to all of those issues, I wanted to spend a bit of time on some theoretical questions that I think are important to think about… however, I am too much of a pragmatist to think that much will come of my comments on these issues, because they would involve revolutionary changes to the current system. I am more optimistic about suggestions regarding how best to administer the current system, than I am that what I say here will result in a fundamental overhaul of the system. But in any case… here it goes:

I. Should the government be involved in these programs to begin with?

As a Christian, I believe that it is primarily the responsibility of believers to help meet the needs of the poor, and I do believe that private charities do a better job of actually helping the poor when comparing the bang we get from private charitable dollars compared to equivalent government dollars. Government welfare programs can be dehumanizing and (as we have often seen historically) can result in creating more long term social harm than good.

One big problem with government entitlements is that people feel entitled to them. There is no gratitude to faceless government bureaucracies from those who receive benefits from them, and those bureaucracies are not able to evaluate particular cases based on intangible factors such as whether or not the person requesting help is doing all they can to improve their own situations, or whether that person is engaging in behavior that only worsens their situation (such as continuing to have illegitimate children from absent fathers who have no intention of providing any support to their offspring). A bureaucracy can only establish eligibility criteria that try to identify those who are needy, and if a person who is pregnant with her fifth illegitimate child is applying for benefits, she can be treated no differently than a woman who has five legitimate children from a husband she had every reason to believe would always be there to support her, but has unexpectedly left her.

I once interviewed a man who was applying for assistance, whose wife had just run out on him and his daughter, who had just been laid off his job, and had a car note and a house note that was more than his unemployment benefits. He was ineligible because his relatively new car put him over the resource limit. Now, in Houston, you cannot practically work without a car, and suggesting to this man that he should sell his car and live off that money until it ran out, and then come back to reapply would have been the most counter-productive course of action possible. Telling this man that he was not eligible for Food Stamps or TANF was one of the most gut wrenching things I ever had to do as a case worker. He was in a desperate situation, and the look on his face was like the look of Job, after the third messenger had shared the bad news of the day to him. On the other hand, I have had cases in which people were clearly milking the system for all it was worth, and I had no choice but to continue the flow of the milk, because on paper, they were more needy than the guy I had to deny, although any objective observer would have known better. Many welfare recipients have adjusted their lifestyle to receive the maximum benefits, and when all the government benefits are tallied, they actually do quite nicely for themselves, though they must engage in soul destroying behaviors that destroy their lives and the lives of their children. All too often, we end up subsidizing irresponsibility and dysfunctionality.

My grandmother lived before the Great Society, and she was pregnant at age 15 with my mother, during the great depression, was unmarried, and after being kicked out by her family, she was homeless. Had she been born 40 years later, she would no doubt have entered a generational cycle of dysfunction that would not only have imprisoned her in a dehumanizing system, but her descendants as well… myself included (that is, of course, assuming that she would not have just aborted my mother). Instead, she had my mother at a Salvation Army hospital, was helped back onto her feet, married a good man, had several more children, and became a productive tax-paying citizen. And she always felt a debt of gratitude to the Salvation Army.

Government handouts are dehumanizing because instead of another human being showing their love, and helping out a person by meeting their need, showing them how to improve their situation, and holding them accountable; you have a faceless bureaucracy, with forms and rules, no love, and (all too often) no common sense. The Salvation Army could tell my Grandmother that she had sinned, but that God loved her, wanted to forgive her, and wanted her to live a better life. A Bureaucrat cannot make “value judgments” about the “life-styles” of the people who apply for benefits – he can only put their information into the computer, and see if the computer says they are eligible, and if so, for how much. There is something redemptive about a person giving someone else help, when the person receiving it knows that the help is not owed… that they are not “entitled” to it, but that the person is helping them because they love them. This kind of help inspires the receiver, and blesses the giver. But unfortunately, this is the difference between charity (which is the Latin equivalent to the Greek word “agape” and refers to the kind of love that comes from God) and welfare.

All that having been said, in the Great Depression, private charities were unable to meet all of the needs, and so the government began stepping in. I think it is highly unlikely that the government will cease to play a roll in these areas, and so do not think it is worth expending a lot of energy trying to change that reality. If we ended all government programs tomorrow, we would start creating new ones the first time we saw old people eating dog food, or kids living under bridges with their mother. I think the best we can hope for is that the government will try to play its roll in a more constructive way.

II. Should the TANF and Food Stamp Programs be done away with?

During the Great Depression, the government did help people in need, but it did so in ways that encouraged work and discouraged people from receiving this help any longer than they needed it. For example, they had work programs, in which people built roads, bridges, and Government Buildings, rather than simply handing out free money. The people who participated in this program had the dignity of hard work, they could take the money they earned with pride, and yet the money was not so good that they would want to keep these jobs any longer than they had to.

They also had a commodities program, in which the government gave surplus food to people who were hungry. One of these commodities was Spam. Now today, people think of e-mail when their hear the word Spam, but Spam is a food, which if you grew up eating it, you understand why the name came to be applied to unwanted junk mail, that comes in large quantities. Before microwaves, it was a quick and cheap meal. My father, who grew up during the Great Depression, could not stand the smell of it, because he had eaten enough of it to last a life time. These commodities kept people from starving, but there was no incentive to stay on that program any longer than necessary.

The problem with the Food Stamps is that it is too generous and too convenient. A family of four on food stamps, can receive about 400 dollars a month in Food Stamps (not to mention WIC, with which they can also buy dairy products), and with those stamps they can buy the choicest foods that one can find in a modern grocery store. What incentive do they have to get off this program? None. Now, for those who are elderly or disabled, I think the Food Stamps program is a good thing… the only problem is that these people often get very little in Food Stamps because their Social Security checks are counted against them. But for people who are able-bodied, I think we would better help them in the long run by giving them basic government commodities that would feed them, but not quite so thoroughly satisfy them as Food Stamps do.

There are food banks all over the country that already do something like this, and what is interesting is that I have often had people complain that their food stamp case was not being certified quickly enough, and that their kids would be eating dinner out trash cans, only to be told, when I referred them to a food bank, that they didn’t like food banks, because “They only give you can goods and bread.” Apparently the trash cans provide better fare.

My father was the hardest working man I ever knew, and I am convinced that he worked so hard all of his life in large part because he didn’t want to ever have to eat another can of Spam again. And while he never finished High School, he was making about $100 dollars an hour as an insulator when he retired, and his Spamophobia had the added benefit of him providing well for his children, and him having the dignity of having earned everything he had.

So I say, let them eat Spam. Let them eat so much of it, that they never want to smell it again. And then let them get a job, and buy their food in the grocery store the same way everyone else does… with money they have earned buy the sweat of their brow.

My other life... (What's Wrong With Welfare? Part I)

Yes... I lead a double life....

Well.... not quite like that. I am a mild mannered parish priest, but I am also a mild mannered supervisor for the Texas Works division of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (which was the Texas Department of Human Services until a few months ago).

I am often told that it seems a bit contradictory for me to be a conservative Republican who works with Food Stamps, Medicaid, and TANF (aka welfare), but you would probably be surprised at how conservative people are who work with these programs. When I began working for the agency back in 1992, I expected to be surrounded by bleeding heart liberals... and I suspect that this impression comes from those who are social workers (such as those who work in Child Protective Services). The difference between social workers (what they do) and case workers (what I do) is that social workers are advocates for people who are abused, neglected, etc –- and so this job tends to attract bleeding hearts, and their experiences in that capacity reinforce their views of the poor as victims, because the people they are dealing with usually are truly victims. Case workers determine what benefits people are eligible for, and in that capacity have to examine the household circumstances, listen to the answers to our questions, and try to make everything add up so that the people we certify get what they are actually eligible for. On their side of the equation, they are dealing with people who are clearly in need. On our side of the equation, we are dealing with people who say that they are in need… and may or may not actually be. Consequently, we see a lot of fraud and abuse of the system. This is not to say that we never encounter cases that touch our hearts, because of the genuine need we see. It is very satisfying on occasion to feel that we have helped people with the kind of needs that these programs were really designed for... it’s just that these cases are more exceptional than they should be.

I intend to post more about this is coming weeks, but suffice it to say that we often help people who are really in need, and we often help people who are really not. The system is flawed, but is better now than it was 10 years ago, prior to welfare reform. Most of the people I work with are Democrats, and the majority are minorities (this is true in my office, but is not true throughout the agency), and yet despite what you might think, most supported the parts of welfare reform that actually worked... because those of us who work with these programs are the most aware of the abuses of the program, and like most tax payers, do not like to see their tax dollars wasted. Also, most of the black folks I work with are more socially conservative than the average white person... yet they almost all vote Democrat, because they have been convinced that the Democrats are on their side, and the Republicans are not -- more on this in future, too.

As one of the few openly Republican people in my office, I have tried to defend the Republicans over the years, and sway my co-workers to believe that Republicans are not all money grubbing rich people who could care less about the poor or minorities. I think over the years I have made some headway, but what the Republicans in Texas have been doing with social services in the past 3 or 4 years has made that task a lot more difficult.

In short, they are trying to privatize these programs, and contract them out to for-profit corporations. Now, I have nothing against corporations making profits, but there is no profit motive when in comes to welfare, because welfare is essentially what happens when you give people stuff for nothing –- and this is not something that for-profit corporations have a lot of experience with. If we were talking about contracting out our functions to non-profit groups, such as the Salvation Army... then I think we would have something worth considering, but that is not what is on the table. What is actually in the works is bad for the people who receive these benefits, bad for people like me who administer them, and bad for the tax payers, because it isn’t going to work, and is going to be a boondoggle that will be much are harder to fix than it was to implement.

In future posts I will discuss why privatization of this kind is a bad idea, present alternative ways to reform the system, and talk about why real welfare reform is resisted not just by the advocates of the poor, but also by many powerful business interests. I will also talk more specifically about what has been going wrong in Texas, but to start things off I will refer the reader to an article in today’s Houston Chronicle that is discussing an on-going scandal that is tied up with the push to privatize welfare.

I have been trying to meet with my Republican State Senator (Jon Lindsay) and my Republican State Representative (Debbie Riddle) for the better part of a year now, but I regret to say that I have been more or less brushed aside. I figured that if I met with them, gave them the secret Republican handshake, and told them what was really going on, they would listen. I still hope that might be true, if I ever get them interested in listening to what I have to say to begin with. I have voted for them in the past, I voted for them again in the last election, and will vote for them in the future... because I believe moral issues, such as abortion and gay marriage are far more important; however, this is not an unimportant issue, and so I hope to use this blog to get at least some people to hear what's wrong with the system, and what's wrong with the current fixes that are in the works.

Click here for Part II: Let Them Eat Spam.