Last In Line

Our View: When State Revenues Are Down The Neediest Suffer Most, And That's Not Fair

The waiting lines for food and medical assistance, always long at state Department of Human Resources offices, have grown even longer during this economic downturn as a surge in applicants has stretched caseworkers to the limit and left many people without benefits, simply because there aren't enough staff workers to process their claims.

Baltimore Sun reporter Julie Bykowicz's poignant story Tuesday about Miracyle Thompson, a pregnant mother who was forced to skip meals so that her children could eat, represents a dilemma faced by thousands of Maryland residents who have waited longer than the 30 days allowed by federal law for emergency assistance approval. With state revenues down, lawmakers have to make tough decisions about how to allocate scarce resources, but it's not fair that the state's poor must bear the brunt of the pain from cuts in state agencies.

For years, the DHR had a hiring freeze that prevented it from bringing on new staffers even as it was shedding more than 1,000 jobs due to transfers and retirements. That left the skeletal work force that remained increasingly unable to carry out all the duties assigned to it. Now that the recession has hit, the agency can't keep up with the flood of new applicants. It's even stopped accepting claims from poor, elderly and disabled adults in order to make vulnerable children a priority.

The agency says it will ramp up hiring to fill some of the 214 vacancies currently on its rolls - how many, it can't yet say. It's also retooling the way it accepts and processes applications for emergency assistance: Instead of coming into an office and filling out paper forms, people in need can submit applications by mail or online, and staffers can interview clients by telephone and approve them electronically. That should help cut down on the long waits in line. And the agency says that despite the big uptick in applications for aid, it's still managing to approve 85 percent of them within 30 days.

But as Ms. Thompson's story shows, the changes have not prevented the social safety net from fraying. DHR, like social service departments across the county, is woefully understaffed to handle the current crisis, and the problem can't be solved just by moving managers around or hiring a few dozen more workers who need months of training. The agency may be doing the best it can under the circumstances, but that's still not enough to protect all of society's most vulnerable members - and that should be a concern for all Marylanders.