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Benefits system not fixed, counties say

Computers issuing 11,300 overpayment memos each month

John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 21, 2006 at midnight

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The computer system that handles Colorado's welfare benefits is still out of whack, despite recent reports to the contrary, county officials and some recipients contend.

A bipartisan committee from Colorado Counties Inc. recently estimated that the Computer Benefits Management System is still generating an average of 11,300 notices of overpayments to clients every month.

In the two years and two months since the system came online, it has churned out 234,085 notices of a suspected $98 million in overpayments, county officials say.

"Is the system up and running? Is it fixed? No," said Susan Beckman, an Arapahoe County commissioner and part of a group that has been studying the problem. "It's running, but is it functioning at the level that's appropriate for this system? No."

The $222.7 million computer system was aimed at consolidating several different systems that oversee benefits programs such as food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Aid to Needy Families.

Soon after it went online in 2004, the system became mired in complaints from clients and from the county officials who administer the benefits programs. The system also was the subject of a lawsuit, which charged that thousands of people had their benefits wrongfully terminated.

At a Dec. 11 meeting of the legislature's Joint Budget Committee, JBC staffer Michael Cain reported that many of the problems had been corrected.

Cain said settlement talks are under way in the lawsuit, complaints from clients are down, and the state officially accepted the system from the contractor, EDS, in June.

That report irked Sonja Gordon-Firing, a 66-year-old Lakewood woman who receives food stamps and Medicaid services.

Gordon-Firing has a shopping bag under her bed stuffed with long and seemingly contradictory notices that the CBMS has sent to her in the past 15 months.

In the span of three weeks last month, she received several notices saying she was approved for the Medicaid program. In between, she also got a claim alleging she had been overpaid by $16.

Some of the memos, she said, make no sense at all, such as one "notice of change" she received in October.

It said: "Your food stamp benefit has changed. Here's why: Your case was eligible to receive a restoration of benefits for the previous period of 6/2006 to 6/2006 in the amount of 0.00. The entire amount of the restoration will be placed in your EBT account."

When the system cut her off from food stamps, Gordon-Firing turned to Colorado Legal Services, where a lawyer intervened with a benefits supervisor.

Gordon-Firing said the supervisor was able to manipulate the computer to get her food stamps restored. But she said the barrage of computer-generated mail is unnerving.

"I feel like a victim of the system," she said.

Her lawyer, Jim Dean, said his office has seen a lot of cases like Gordon-Firing's where the computer generates a blizzard of inconsistent memos. Many people also have been cut off after turning in their paperwork because it doesn't get entered into the computer.

"It's our understanding that the system is designed that way, to terminate if nothing is entered," he said.

To make the system work, Beckman said, county officials have developed a six-volume set of "manual work-arounds" for resolving problems similar to the one cited by Gordon-Firing. Counties also have had to increase their staffing levels by 30 percent to 40 percent, she said.

Arapahoe County has added the equivalent of an additional 24 full-time employees since 2004, Adams County has added 24 and Jefferson County 21, Beckman said.

The JBC's Cain wondered how much an increased workload might account for the additional staff. He also said he was not aware of the report by Colorado Counties and wanted to know more.

"I am concerned that they have a different perspective on the overall system," he said. "Certainly, the counties have some valid points. If I gave the impression that the system is perfect, I certainly didn't mean to do that."

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