Tuesday the federal courts became critical in two issues close to my heart.
For many years, as regular readers know, I railed against the improperly low number of Missourians receiving SNAP – food stamp – benefits. I still maintain that better than 150,000 of our citizen neighbors who do not now get stamps ought to receive benefits. And, as I repeatedly point out, the greatest impediment to receiving help remains the State of Missouri’s Department of Social Services.
As reported by the Kansas City Star and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, my friends at Empower Missouri and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri filed a federal lawsuit documenting that the switch to a contactless “call center” system makes getting signed-up for food stamps extremely hard. The suit documents people waiting four hours on hold to talk to either a call center employee or a contractor’s employee paid by the state. -stltoday.com
Alas, four hours of waiting on the phone is not the worst. I have heard from pantry folk of citizens lasting more than eight hours on the phone and never getting a person on the line.
Remember, applying for SNAP takes a lot of time and a pile of paperwork on every member of the household. It is very common to get into the process and discover a key document is missing. Now, under federal rules the clock to process that application starts as soon as the applicant requests help. And, in the old days, the state wanted people to apply. Every county had a DSS office where people could just show-up and sign-up. Plus, for years many charities (including Circle Of Concern) were supplied blank food stamp applications with return envelopes. Food pantries and other charities worked with families to help them get help.
Not anymore. Now virtually all applicants must dial in to the broken, understaffed and under resourced call centers.
As with the handling of child abuse cases and dozens of other basic state services, things got so bad that concerned people turned to the federal courts to protect struggling families.
Meanwhile, recall that last year I served as a Democrat commissioner on the St. Louis County Reapportionment Commission charged with drawing new county council district lines. As has happened for the past half century, the equally split commission of Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on new boundaries. Early this month Federal Magistrate Judge Nannette A. Baker combined lawsuits filed by Dems and Republicans and held a one-day trial. Thence she decided to reject both of our proposed maps and come back with her own.
We Democrats wanted to keep each municipally within a single district as often as we could. The Republicans did not share that desire, and, wanted to protect existing Council member Tim Fitch who moved to the northern edge of his district to a spot doomed to be redistricted.
The judge admitted the task was not easy…
“Then, I attempted to logically adjust the boundaries of District Two, Three and Five. This is where I gained a better understanding of the challenges faced by the Commission. Oftentimes once I was satisfied with the population of one or two districts and believed those districts to be “final,” I found that the impact on a surrounding district was so severe that all the districts needed further adjustments”
[case No. 4:21-CV-1406 NAB pages 25 & 26]
Of course, Judge Baker ought not to have been forced to do this work.
Except that this is Missouri. Courts are also drawing state senate district lines. (Congressional boundaries? That’s another rotten kettle of fish.)
Time and again, work which ought to be bureaucratic and simple gets tangled in the courts because this Republican dominated state fails to perform.
Remember, CLEAN Missouri created an independent state demographer to draw district lines. The Republicans so feared that concept that they put their “revision” on the next major ballot, adding to this confusion.
And, as I’ve noted for years, the Department of Social Services has a sordid history of ignoring the needs of those they are charged with helping. They know their actions create hardship and deprive struggling families of aid they are eligible and entitled to receive. Still, it takes a federal lawsuit to try and force improvement.
Welcome to Missouri.
Glenn Koenen