It’s the official off-season for Colorado’s legislature, but the six-member Joint Budget Committee has had a busy week.
Not only did it push compromise talks in the CU tuition battle (detailed elsewhere in this column), but it took steps to boost the governor’s plan to fix the system that has been scrambling state social benefit programs for 10 months.
Yesterday, the JBC approved a request by the governor’s office for another $6.5 million in emergency funds to help get the $200 million computer system on its feet.
That’s a lot of money, and we hope to see a lot of results – and soon. The money will pay for 17 new hires, funnel $3.9 million to county welfare departments and, ironically, rent some space from the system’s developer, Electronic Data Systems.
The JBC was skeptical of the governor’s request for $8.2 million and 34 hires, and Sen. Dave Owen, R-Greeley, asked for a follow-up report in August detailing why the Colorado Benefits Management System needs so many additional people.
Earlier in the week, he wondered if the state was simply building a bigger bureaucracy around the faulty system, and he suggested the state borrow the other 17 people from existing agencies. Given the widespread problems with the system, Owen’s approach seems reasonable to us. The JBC appropriated $8 million earlier this year to help fix the system. The panel wonders why that wasn’t enough to fix the problems.
John Witwer, the former lawmaker hired by the governor to oversee the benefits system, says the state needs more employees who will be exclusively dedicated to helping make the $200 million system fully operational.
The new benefits computer was brought online, against expert advice, last September. The system, designed to bring six programs under one electronic umbrella, sputtered from the outset, causing delays in getting Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits to eligible Coloradans.
Of the 170 employees originally trained to work on the system, Witwer says only 60 remain. Advocates for welfare clients were skeptical of the funding request because it contained no specific mechanism for ensuring the prompt delivery of benefits to the elderly, disabled and children while the system is getting fixed. “That is unconscionable,” said Ed Kahn of the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, which has sued the state over the system’s defects.
Witwer has asked advocates to let him know when they encounter problems so that he can devise work-around solutions. That’s exactly the right attitude, and he needs to make certain that some of the $14.5 million in supplemental funds that have been approved by the JBC go to ensure that client services are delivered at a suitable level, and in a timely way.
