The Missing How with Food Stamp Backlog Clearance
One crucial thing is missing from an AP article on the judicially appointed special master’s elimination of Rhode Island’s UHIP-driven backlog of people waiting for food stamps:
The attorney appointed by a federal judge to deal with failures in Rhode Island’s food stamp system says the state has eliminated a backlog of thousands of applications. The state has been grappling with problems since it introduced a new computer system last year.
Deming Sherman also said in a report filed in U.S. District Court in Providence last week that the state is almost current on processing new applications.
If we take this self-reporting at face value, the key question is: How did he do that so quickly? It is critical that Rhode Islanders know why an appointed Mr. Fix-It was able to accomplish in weeks what the professionals in state government could do in months (going on years). Something really must be going wrong if the state’s endemic problems are so easily fixed by somebody slightly outside of the system.