Oscar Franklin has seen his future, and it is Velcro.
Franklin, 52, has invented, and received a patent for, a gizmo he calls a “reusable logo tag,” which attaches a message or symbol by Velcro onto baseball caps or coolers or pretty much anything.
Wal-Mart was interested. The nonprofit MicroBusiness Development Corp. staked him to a $1,500 small business loan. And adding to his good fortune, after years of waiting, Franklin got into a low-income apartment in Denver.
That’s when trouble began for Franklin and his 9-year-old son, Jaden. In moving from Arapahoe County to Denver, the two vanished from the state computer system – as did Franklin’s food stamps.
So Franklin spent much of his business loan on food and rent.
The $200 million Colorado Benefits Management System was designed to streamline the processing of food stamps, Medicaid and several other social benefit plans.
But since its debut in September, the system has been riddled with problems, which were documented in a state audit last month.
Among less-publicized flaws uncovered in the audit by Deloitte Consulting is the difficulty transferring a client’s file from one county to another.
The report found that the system design creates backlogs and delays when cases are transferred between counties.
There is also nothing in the system to assure that work on a case is completed before it is transferred, the study said.
“As a result, staff in impacted counties spent a significant portion of their day trying to correctly assign cases,” the report stated.
The state has tried to fix the problem.
The first attempt June 11 backfired, and case transfers were “completely shut down” for more than a week, according to Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the state human services department.
This past weekend, the state tried again, and as of Monday, the fix appears to be working, she said.
McDonough said both efforts were paid for by the state, but she did not have an estimate of the cost.
She said the state does not track cases backlogged because of transfer issues.
According to attorneys at the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, the transfer problem is especially bad because staff in receiving counties aren’t familiar with the cases they suddenly have to deal with.
The center, a nonprofit advocacy group that has taken the state to court over problems with the benefits system, gets numerous reports of problems caused by clients changing counties and then being lost in the computer system.
Franklin did not need the Deloitte audit to understand the system’s failures.
Despite numerous trips to human service agencies in both counties, he and Jaden went a couple of months without food stamps. His income spread thinner, he got behind in rent, and, ultimately, he used some of the $1,500 loan for living expenses.
“I would have been off food stamps and disability” payments and making a living on the logo idea if the system had not lost track of him, he said.
Thirteen years ago, Franklin was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a condition in which chronic inflammation can affect various organs, including lungs, lymph nodes, eyes, skin and heart.
Since then, he’s been in the hospital dozens of times, regularly takes 12 medications and says he hasn’t been able to work consistently.
So Franklin and his son have had to rely on disability payments, food stamps and whatever they could scrape together.
A college graduate and a natural tinkerer, Franklin insists he wants to pay his own way.
“I want to try to get back on my feet. I just need somebody to put some money into me,” he said. The Velcro idea “is a great product. It’ll sell, I know it.”
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-820-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
