Colorado should not get stuck with an $11.2 million bill to reimburse the federal government for food-stamp overpayments, especially under the circumstances. The sanction is being imposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for questionable benefit distributions and cost of living adjustments in 2005.
The problem is that some of the overpayments might not have been overpayments at all. The $11.2 million was recorded as errors by Colorado’s besotted Computer Benefits Management System. Deputy Attorney General Dennis Ellis says some of the errors could very well have been underpayments.
Colorado has appealed the original $11.6 million sanction, and the USDA recently agreed to lower it to $11.2 million. That’s still a hefty sum, and the paltry $400,000 reduction doesn’t address the questions of accuracy and fairness. We were glad to see that the state has appealed the USDA decision to a federal court.
Ellis said the state will seek court permission for an independent review of the USDA’s data to determine an accurate amount of overpayments. “We want a bit better justification for the way these numbers were arrived at,” said Ellis. More than 107,246 households were eligible for food stamps last year, compared with 78,902 in 2002, a 36 percent increase.
We urge the court to order such a review. The problem is that the state’s much-maligned $200 million benefits computer system, which determines eligibility for public assistance, is so convoluted that auditing the numbers could be virtually impossible.
Federal officials blame the overpayments on computer glitches and human error. State officials claim the feds misinterpreted some of the data. After years of headaches, the state should have the opportunity to find out.
The CBMS was launched prematurely by the administration of Gov. Bill Owens in 2004 against the advice of systems experts and county officials who said it hadn’t undergone adequate testing. It has been a catastrophe from the outset. Even now, the system is delaying benefits for thousands of needy Coloradans – generating errors at the rate of about 11,000 a month. No one knows if it’s overpayments, underpayments or false errors. Ellis declined to talk about errors that might generate future sanctions.
The new administration of Gov. Bill Ritter inherited this mess, and recently formed an advisory committee to prioritize and resolve any problems. Ellis said he doesn’t expect the court to erase the entire sanction, but, he said, “We just want to reduce the liability as much as we can.” We urge the USDA and the courts to be reasonable.
