Statement of the Coalition for Low-Income Pennsylvanians (CLIP) in response to the interim audit of the Department of Public Welfare released by Auditor General Eugene DePasquale on June 24
The Coalition for Low-Income Pennsylvanians (CLIP) is troubled that the Department of Public Welfare has routinely failed to cross-check its recipient lists with Social Security Administration’s list of people who have died. CLIP agrees that such cross-checks are a basic management function that should be performed routinely, but notes that the report does not establish widespread recipient fraud. CLIP believes that DPW’s failure stems from chronic under-staffing of County Assistance Offices.
“The County Assistance Offices have 38% fewer workers per 1,000 cases than they had 10 years ago. Without enough staff to do the work, some cases will fall through the cracks,” said the Rev. Sandra Strauss, Director of Public Advocacy, Pennsylvania Council of Churches, and co-chair of CLIP.
The audit found little evidence of fraud by recipients. It did find 138 instances when DPW may have mistakenly authorized benefits to the cards of individuals who had died. In 2014, approximately 1.8 million Pennsylvanians received SNAP benefits.
“The Auditor General has not found substantial evidence of fraud by recipients,” said Peter Zurflieh, an attorney with the Community Justice Project and CLIP co-chair. “Family members may have reported the death of their loved ones to DPW, but overwhelmed caseworkers failed to act on this information.”
“In light of the chronic difficulties that people receiving benefits face in simply trying to communicate with DPW, we are not surprised by this additional evidence that DPW simply lacks the personnel to do its job,” said Ken Regal, Executive Director of Just Harvest in Pittsburgh.
Moreover, the Auditor General has not determined whether funds were returned to the Treasury unspent, as occurs automatically if the EBT card is not used for a period of months.
“Before we assume that most of the cases cited by the Auditor General were fraudulent, we should know whether the funds were actually spent,” added Louise Hayes, an attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia.
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