• Food stamp participation hits 11% in R.I., By Ted Nesi, November 13, 2009, Providence Business News: “More than 11 percent of Rhode Island residents were receiving food stamps in August, according to new government figures. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said 116,252 Rhode Island residents were participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in August. (Congress renamed the food stamp program last year.) That was up from 88,423 a year earlier. Rhode Island tied with Florida and Pennsylvania for the fifth-highest monthly increases in food stamp enrollment, with participation rising 3.1 percent in all three states between July and August. Connecticut was highest with a 4.7 percent increase…”
• Texas eases rule requiring six-month reviews of food-stamp eligibility, By Robert T. Garrett, November 11, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Texas is easing a requirement that most families on food stamps must be interviewed every six months, a step that will relieve pressure on the system for determining who receives state aid, officials said Tuesday. The state Health and Human Services Commission also has reassigned about 140 veteran eligibility workers in Dallas and Houston to join front-line workers in taking applications and renewals. That should reduce applicants’ wait times, officials say…”

• Food stamp woes grow with need, By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, November 5, 2009, San Antonio Express-News: “Despite efforts to improve the system, food stamp applicants continue to face long delays in assistance amid a recession-fueled surge in demand. In Bexar County, the state processed 22,463 more applications from March to September than it did in 2008. More than 210,000 people received $26 million in food stamps in October in the county, with the average family getting $322 a month. In the vast majority of households receiving food assistance - 82 percent - at least one person is employed. Many have had to wait six months for their first food stamps…”
• Food stamp workers share frustrations, By Corrie MacLaggan, November 5, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “When the new head of the agency responsible for the state’s backlogged food stamp applications sent an e-mail to employees asking for feedback about the agency, he got it. About 500 state workers replied to Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs, telling him about low morale and low pay, poor management, technology problems, insufficient training, long hours away from their families. They wrote about feeling frazzled, crying on the drive to work and actively looking for other jobs…”

• Food stamp workers work longer hours and get less training, By Corrie MacLaggan, October 29, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “As Texas begins hiring hundreds of food stamp workers to help erase an application backlog that has left families waiting months for aid, no one expects the problems to disappear any time soon. The new state workers are entering a system in crisis. They’ll have far fewer experienced colleagues than they would have five years ago. Training is shorter. Mentoring has mostly fallen by the wayside. And employees are working an average of 13 hours of overtime per week - which, in some cases, is mandatory…”
• Judge orders Indiana to improve Food Stamps processing, By Ken Kusmer (AP), October 28, 2009, Louisville Courier-Journal: “A federal judge has ordered Indiana’s partially privatized welfare intake system to speed up decisions on food stamp applications, but the state has a year to meet its first target. U.S. District Judge Robert Miller issued a preliminary injunction last week in a class-action lawsuit covering every food stamp applicant in Indiana over the past 19 months. The order represents the latest setback to one of nation’s most ambitious welfare privatization efforts and came just days after Gov. Mitch Daniels fired vendor IBM Corp. from its $1.34 billion contract to lead the project…”

Wait for food stamps rises as more people seek assistance, By Celinda Emison, October 8, 2009, Abilene Reporter News: “When Mary Ranjer, a working mother of six, applied for food assistance in June, she had to wait until mid-August to receive the help. Ranjer and her husband both work, but tough economic times have forced them to apply for food stamps. The Ranjers are among a growing number of Abilenians who have had to apply for and wait for help. ‘It has really taken a long time,’ said Ranjer, 37, who was waiting in line Thursday at the Department of Health and Human Services office. ‘I have to take my day off to take care of this.’ Taylor County has experienced an 8 percent increase in the number of individuals receiving food stamps over the past year. There are 15,903 individuals who are receiving benefits through the SNAP program, an increase from last year when 14,674 individuals were being served…”

• Federal officials: Texas needs food stamp czar, By Corrie MacLaggan, October 6, 2009, Austin-American Statesman: “Federal officials say Texas should appoint a food stamp czar to take charge of fixing the application backlogs and high error rates plaguing the program. ‘All states are feeling the pinch right now because of the economic recession, but I’m not aware of any state that is having it to the degree that Texas is,’ said William Ludwig, a Dallas-based regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. Ludwig, who rarely gives interviews, oversees food stamps for Texas and four other states. He attributed the state’s problems last week to a “whole series of missteps, mismanagement over the last four years,” starting with thousands of state workers getting pink slips in advance of a massive privatization effort…”
• Too many Texans are waiting too long for food stamps, Editorial, October 7, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “It is scandalous that Texas is letting so many of its residents go hungry when the resources exist to feed them. But those resources - food stamps - are being processed at a snail’s pace because the state has not been able to get its act together. Texans deserve a better, more compassionate solution than state leaders have proposed so far. The massive backlog that has left low-income families hungry and waiting for weeks and months for government food assistance has reached a critical level. In September 2009, Texas processed 58.6 percent of new applications on time…”

A food stamp fingerprint feud, By Corrie MacLaggan, October 2, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “The federal agency that oversees food stamps wants Texas to stop fingerprinting applicants as a way to save resources and speed up what the agency says is an unacceptably slow application system. But because state law requires the fingerprinting, the Health and Human Services Commission finds itself caught between what the Legislature mandates and what federal officials want. ‘One of the things I think Texas needs to do is streamline their operations,’ said William Ludwig, a regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. ‘Finger imaging is very time-consuming.’ Texas is one of four states with such a requirement, which supporters - including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst - say is an important way to prevent people from collecting benefits under more than one name. Critics have said it’s invasive and a waste of money and seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist…”

Texas got less stimulus money per resident than almost every other state, By Dave Michaels, September 28, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Texas has received less funding per resident from the stimulus package so far than almost any other state, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of federal grants and contracts. Texas lawmakers have long complained about one reason for the disparity: Federal funding formulas, often written by small-state lawmakers, disadvantage big states like Texas. But Texas is also a victim of its own thrift: With fewer research universities, less subsidized housing, and a smaller contribution to programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance, it stands to receive less emergency funds than if it spent more of its own money on the programs…”

• More in Rhode Island now living in poverty, By Paul Edward Parker, September 22, 2009, Providence Journal: “More than 3 percent of Rhode Island’s population — some 33,000 men, women and children — fell into poverty in 2008 as the recession tightened its grip on the Ocean State, according to recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2007 to 2008, Rhode Island displaced Massachusetts as the New England state with the highest poverty rate. The state also leapfrogged Maine and Vermont in the process, going from fourth-highest to highest in the six-state region…”
• Quarter of West Virginians live in poverty, study says, By Alison Knezevich, September 12, 2009, Charleston Gazette: “About a quarter of West Virginians are now or will soon be living in poverty — and the situation is even worse for children in the Mountain State, according to a new report. The recession could increase the number of children living below the poverty line by more than a third, to 34 percent, say analysts at the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. Economists define the poverty line as a household income of $21,910 or less for a family of four. On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau released data showing that 13.2 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2008 — the most since 1997. State and local figures are set to come out Sept. 22…”
• Poverty level rises in region, By Enrique Rangel, September 13, 2009, Amarillo Globe-News: “In 2007, one of every four residents in Potter and Hall counties was poor, a rate twice as high as the rest of the nation. And in all likelihood the number of destitute people in those counties and in most of the Texas Panhandle increased last year. That conclusion is based on the annual poverty report the U.S. Census Bureau issued last week. The agency said the official U.S. poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent the previous year, and the most affected regions in the nation were the South, Midwest and West. Under the 2009 federal guidelines, a family of four living on $22,050 or less a year is considered poor…”

• Backlog, processing errors bedevil food stamp program, By Corrie MacLaggan, September 24, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “Tens of thousands of Texas families are waiting as long as several months for food stamps as a surge in applications lands on an already strained system. And when state workers do process the applications, they often do it wrong. One out of every six food stamp applications is incorrectly processed by state workers, according to state data. In some cases, that means eligible families are being denied benefits. That error rate has skyrocketed since 2004, rising from 2.8 percent to 21.4 percent last year. For the first half of this year, the error rate fell to 17.4 percent. This comes as Texas is struggling with a food stamp application backlog, failing to process more than a third of applications within the 30 days required by the federal government…”
• More residents using food stamps, By Michelle Saxton, September 24, 2009, Charleston Daily Mail: “About 37,000 more West Virginians were using food stamps this summer than last year, reflecting a historic high nationally in the number of people who need help paying for food. Across the country, more people are using food stamps - and getting more in benefits - due in part to the struggling economy and a financial boost from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, nutrition service officials say. About 35.1 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits this past June, up about 22 percent from 28.7 million in June 2008, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Nutrition Service spokeswoman Jean Daniel. For West Virginia, those figures were 315,938 individual participants in June, up from 278,713 in June 2008, Daniel said…”

• Proposing a public health option as a ’safety net’, By Robert Pear, September 19, 2009, New York Times: “Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a pivotal Republican, described on Saturday the changes she wanted to see in a comprehensive health care bill to make insurance more affordable, and she proposed a government insurance company as a possible backup to the private market if coverage remains too costly. Ms. Snowe’s proposal was among 564 amendments filed in the last couple of days by members of the Senate Finance Committee, which plans to take up the legislation this week as the struggle over health care enters a critical new phase…”
• How health overhaul would affect the uninsured, By Christopher Weaver, September 21, 2009, National Public Radio: “How many Americans are uninsured? According to the Census Bureau, in 2008, more than 46 million Americans - about 15 percent of the population - did not have health insurance. Because of the recession, many experts believe the number is now larger. Who are the uninsured? Income is a strong factor in identifying the uninsured. About two-thirds of uninsured Americans earn less than twice the federal poverty level, which is $22,050 for a family of four. Almost 25 percent of the uninsured are poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid but are not enrolled…”
• Uninsured take a toll on all North Texans, By Robert T. Garrett and Jason Roberson, September 20, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Up to one-third of Dallas-area residents don’t have health insurance, and the number is rising. Everybody in North Texas pays the cost, through taxes and higher insurance costs - as much as $1,800 per family. Illegal immigrants pump up the numbers. But even if there weren’t any here, Texas still would virtually lead the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance, according to both conservative and liberal researchers. And Dallas County is close on Harris County’s heels as the major metro county with the lowest rate of health insurance coverage…”

• Flood of food stamp requests drains agency, By Gary Scharrer, September 6, 2009, Houston Chronicle: “State employees can’t keep up with applications for food assistance, and the inadequate staffing to handle the casework is making them frustrated and stressed out, some say. Morale is lousy at the agency that manages the program. Many work long hours, but the cases keep stacking up. The conditions are blamed for high absentee rates and employee turnover. Some welcome a recent class-action lawsuit that accuses the state of violating federal rules requiring food stamp applications to be certified within 30 days. Many applicants must wait months before they get food assistance…”
• Employee turnover high at Texas agency that processes food-stamp applications, Associated Press, September 7, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Employee turnover is running at 16 percent this year at the overwhelmed Texas public benefits agency responsible for processing food-stamp applications. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has seen a huge increase in food-stamp applications this year…”

• Dallas leads nation in repeat teen births, study finds, By Robert T. Garrett, September 1, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Dallas leads the nation in the percentage of teen births that aren’t the mother’s first delivery, a nonpartisan national research group finds in a new report. Dallas had the highest percentage of teen births that are repeat births - 28 percent - among 73 major U.S. cities in 2006, the latest year for which city-level data are available. Texas has the highest repeat rate of any state - 23 percent of teen births. And five of the 15 worst-ranked cities are in Texas, according to the group Child Trends, in a report to be released Wednesday…”
• Houston had the most girls under 15 giving birth in 2006, report says, By Todd Ackerman, August 31, 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: ” More girls under 15 give birth in Houston than in any other U.S. city, according to a new national report. And among all births involving teenage mothers, Dallas had the nation’s highest percentage of repeat births, at 28 percent, while Fort Worth was eighth, at 25 percent. The report, by the research organization Child Trends, found that 20 percent more babies were born to girls 14 or younger in Houston than in New York and Los Angeles in 2006, the latest year for which data are available…”
• Texas has restrictive birth control policy for minors, By Robert T. Garrett, September 6, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Texas, a leader in teen pregnancy and the state where more teens give birth to subsequent children than in any other, maintains one of the most restrictive policies in the nation for minors to obtain prescription birth control. Not even young parents in Texas can get birth control without their own parents’ permission at nearly a third of the family planning clinics on contract with the state health department…”

Jobless in Texas fight uphill battle when filing claim, By Peggy Fikac, August 15, 2009, Houston Chronicle: “If you lose your job in Texas, you may be out of luck in more ways than one. The Texas Workforce Commission rejected about a third of all jobless claims last year and 27 percent the first half of this year. When jobless people appealed those initial decisions, their chances of winning this year were only about one in four. The controversial reason for the denials is Texas’ tight list of eligibility standards, which the Legislature refused to expand even when offered $555 million more in federal stimulus money in return. Gov. Rick Perry, who led the opposition to the measure, said it would be bad for Texas in the long run…”

• Texas sued over delay in food stamps, By Gary Scharrer, August 10, 2009, Houston Chronicle: “Rachel Cavazos is getting close to desperate. A pending divorce and no full-time job have left her struggling to feed her four children. She applied for food stamps in April but is still is waiting for approval. ‘It’s very upsetting. It’s very frustrating,’ the 32-year-old Houston woman said. ‘It’s very hurtful, especially when somebody doesn’t give you the benefit of the doubt. The help is not for me. It’s for my babies. I don’t want my children to suffer.’ Cavazos is one of thousands of Texans waiting for food stamps, demand for which has spiked in recent months. The long wait has prompted some advocates to file a class-action lawsuit to try to force Texas to comply with federal regulations requiring that most eligible applicants be certified for food stamps within 30 days…”
• Still more Utahns apply for food stamps, By Julia Lyon, August 10, 2009, Salt Lake Tribune: “As the nation’s economy appears to shift into recovery mode, the number of Utah families relying on food stamps continues to break records. As of July, just over 86,000 households were receiving more than $25 million in food stamps, which provide low-income families money for food each month. The number of households increased 3.4 percent between June and July, slightly more than the 3.2 percent growth rate the month before…”

• State’s jobless confront hurdles, By Peggy Fikac, July 26, 2009, Houston Chronicle: “For Jerry, the chance of unemployment benefits is the chance to breathe a little easier for a few weeks. He’d been used to a good salary as an IT consultant, but he’s been out of work for a year. He and his wife sold a car and cut back, but he still puts more on his credit card than he’d like. At 62, he is looking at jobs in neighboring states. Closer to his Panhandle home, he’s competing with high school kids for work…”
• California’s slow handling of appeals from workers denied unemployment benefits gets worse, By Marc Lifsher, July 28, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “California is so slow in handling appeals from workers denied unemployment benefits that it may take years to catch up, state officials say. And the backlog is getting worse. With unemployment now at 11.6% in California and rising, there is a record backlog of more than 82,500 Californians who have appeals pending on their eligibility for checks of as much as $475 a week. At the same time, the state is about to furlough for three days a month the judges and support staff who handle the appeals…”

• Massachusetts, home of nation’s most ambitious health care law, offers reform ‘dos and don’ts’, By Steve LeBlanc (AP), July 24, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “Three years into its experiment with near-universal health care, Massachusetts has some ‘dos and don’ts’ for the nation as it grapples with the best way to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans.  Do require that virtually everyone have health insurance, the overriding goal in Massachusetts. Don’t ignore rising costs, the single greatest threat to the law’s long-term affordability…”
• Texas Medicaid program likely to surge under health care proposals, By Dave Michaels, July 24, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “The effort to insure tens of millions of uncovered Americans will almost certainly involve a sweeping expansion of Medicaid – with Texas probably feeling the impact more than any other state.  State lawmakers have for years limited Medicaid’s reach to low-income adults, who under Texas rules don’t qualify for the joint state-federal program. One proposal by U.S. House lawmakers would provide federal funding to extend Medicaid to about 1 million Texas adults, according to the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities – a massive jump from the 38,000 who qualify today…”

• Texas averts crisis over extended unemployment benefits, By Dave Montgomery, July 21, 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “The Texas Workforce Commission took emergency action Tuesday to continue unemployment assistance to as many as 15,000 jobless Texans who were in danger of exhausting their benefits by the end of the month…”
• Unemployment insurance a two-sided political issue for Perry, By Jason Embry, July 21, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “Gov. Rick Perry’s opposition to federal stimulus dollars for unemployment benefits earlier this year boosted his standing among many Republicans. But other issues surrounding the state’s unemployment program could create political headaches for Perry in the next year and a half…”
• Texas leaders should reconsider the federal stimulus money, By Mitchell Schnurman, July 22, 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “At what point does the real world trump politics and principle?  Texas is shaping up as a test case, because more than 23,000 workers are losing their jobs every week and $556 million in federal aid is sitting on the table, unclaimed.  Texas is one of only four states — the others are Alabama, Florida and Virginia — that rejected federal stimulus dollars connected with reforming unemployment insurance. Thirty-six states qualify for the federal money, including more than two dozen that adopted reforms this year, and the rest are still debating the issue…”

Texas stalling on extended pay for jobless, critics say, By Robert T. Garrett, July 17, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “Critics say the Texas Workforce Commission has overstated the role that federal requirements played in delaying 13 more weeks of unemployment benefits for Texans who have been out of work more than a year.  Andrew Stettner of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-wage workers, said a requirement that the jobless document their work searches is a quarter-century old and has been partially waived by the Obama administration…”

• 13-week unemployment benefits extension held up by U.S. rules, tech glitch, Texas agency says, By Robert T. Garrett, July 15, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “As many as 82,000 unemployed Texans won’t receive an immediate 13-week extension of benefits as they expected because of federal rules and state computer problems, the Texas Workforce Commission said Tuesday…”
• In Texas, thousands face a lengthy gap in unemployment benefits, By Dave Montgomery, July 14, 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Up to 15,000 jobless Texans are expected to exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of July and could be without benefits for more than a month and possibly longer as state officials struggle to implement a 13-week extension…”
• 15,000 Texans to lose checks, By Peggy Fikac, July 14, 2009, Houston Chronicle: “In a sign of lingering hardship, more than 15,000 Texans will lose their unemployment checks at the end of the month because they have exhausted their benefits after 59 weeks without a job…”