Texas Buried By Food Stamp Applications

By KRWG News

Texas – 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.
Employee Joan Barasch, of San Antonio, says "morale is very, very low right now just because of the amount of work."
Agency spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman says more workers are needed, "but we don't know if we will need more workers in a year."
Recently, advocates for low-income families filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the agency alleging more than a third of food-stamp applications languished beyond the one-month processing time required by law.
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Some information from:
San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.