Miracyle Thompson, a pregnant Baltimore County mother of two little boys who have sickle cell disease, was skipping meals and battling with angry doctors over unpaid bills. Her husband's sales job wasn't bringing in enough money to support the growing family. Seeking help, she applied in February for state food and medical assistance.
Federal law requires that those emergency benefits be approved within 30 days. A month ticked by, and then a letter from the state Department of Human Resources arrived: "An agency delay has occurred beyond our control." She'd have to keep waiting. By late April, she and a group of attorneys for the poor decided to sue.
Thompson is one of thousands of Marylanders who have waited longer than the legal limit for assistance approval. As of March, there were about 7,100 overdue medical assistance applications from children and parents, and 4,100 backlogged food assistance requests, according to the most recently available data from human resources.
The bad economy has exacerbated an already overburdened approval process. Assistance offices are being flooded with more needy applicants at a time when the state's dire financial straits prompted a state hiring freeze that until recently deprived the department of the workers necessary to ensure timely approval.
"This is a serious economic situation that we're all in, and working families who are eligible for help should not be bearing the disproportionate share of the crisis," said Debra Gardner of the Public Justice Center, one of the groups that filed Thompson's lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court. "To have to skip meals when you're pregnant because there's nobody to move your paperwork is a terrible shame."
Advocates don't want a protracted legal battle; they're hoping the suit results in a quicker approval process.
Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald said her department's response to record-high applications has been "slower than normal." She said the federal government recently identified Maryland, which by some measures is the wealthiest state in the nation, as one of the neediest in terms of food stamp applications. Active cases have ballooned to 456,526 last month from 285,000 four years ago, and medical and temporary cash assistance also have seen steep increases.
About a month ago, Gov. Martin O'Malley exempted human resources from the state's hiring freeze to add more processing agents, a part of the department that has 1,682 workers and 214 vacancies.
