Ever wake up in the middle of the night desperate to know how many food stamp applicants got rejected in March 1994 in Crawford County, Missouri?
Okay, it never happened to me either.
Still, since the late 1980’s I collected the Missouri Department of Social Services Monthly Management Reports. What started as about a 165-page booklet of data on food stamps, Temporary Assistance and Medicaid eventually moved to the internet on the DSS website [ www.dss.mo.govc/re ] and got trimmed to less than 80 pages.
In our basement storeroom I have several Banker Boxes of the old, printed reports. A couple of times the bureaucrats “forgot” to mail my copy, or – in months when the numbers were particularly obnoxious – the send-out got delayed. Back then I knew who to call to fix that. In the internet age, alas, though the website archived years and years of reports the issues at times took months to get posted. Again, that happened the most when the numbers did not cast favor on the state.
And, as many of you know, for decades I put out a monthly summary of the reports, highlights and lowlights. The state numbers helped other pantry people, friends in non-profits and select media see statewide trends (and data for grant requests). Often my notes simply reinforced the reality on the ground – especially when economic calamity caused rapid surges in need for food and free medical care.
Recently the State of Missouri has stopped posting the DSS Monthly Management Reports for the Family Support Division and MO HealthNet Division. Use the link above, click on the report and you get “Page Not Found.”
This has now happened for months.
Yes, this is deep in the weeds data. Yet it can be very useful.
For example, I have noted many times that covering working adults and kids doesn’t cost Medicaid that much as the vast majority of those subgroups are in Managed Care plans. The greatest costs are for the roughly 25,000 citizens (most all seniors) in Nursing Care facilities. The on-going effort to defy voters’ wishes and reduce working people on Medicaid ignores the main cost driver in the program, seniors and neighbors with severe health needs.
And hiding the management reports is part of a growing trend in this state: hiding information from taxpayers.
Remember, the official position of the Missouri legislature’s Republican majority and the state’s elected leadership is that mere voters are too stupid to decide ‘important issues.’ Voters were wrong to ban puppy mills and concealed carry. “Clean Missouri” was against real Missouri values – such as creating fair legislative districts. Now there is talk of ending MO HealthNet for working poor, despite what voters approved, and, in August voters will get to restrain the Hancock Amendment, restrict voter-approved rules on sales taxes and basically let the elected ignore the state Constitution for five years.
In this environment losing the management reports is not a big thing, except that it is another example of the GOP stealing away more of what we should know if we’re interested and what we need to know to be informed voters.
Instead, they will tell us what we need to know and how to vote. That is the Missouri Way.
Glenn Koenen