The Missouri Department of Social Services is moving forward with a system to verify eligibility of those on the state's welfare programs and validate new clients.
Brian Kinkade, director of the department, said he expects the request for proposals seeking potential bidders to start next week. After that, a pre-bid conference will be held and interested companies can ask questions about the proposal.
By the end of March, Kinkade said, the department anticipates to award a bidder. Kinkade said he doesn't know how much the system will cost until bids are submitted.
There is pending legislation, Senate Bill 607, that essentially accomplishes the same result, but Kinkade said the bill could change the system based on its requirements. Despite what happens to the measure, he said the department will implement the verification system as budgeted in a House bill from the 2015 session.
The Senate bill, sponsored by Cassville Republican David Sater, authorizes a contract between the state and a third party vendor to catch claims for assistance such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as food stamps) and Medicaid that are fraudulent, out-of-date or no longer applicable.
Testifying before the Seniors, Families and Children Committee he chairs on Tuesday, Sater said the policy would save the state money and increase the department's efficiency. The bill, he added, codifies what the department already has underway.
Illinois and Pennsylvania have enacted similar systems, Sater said, using a private contractor.
"We've had problems in the state of Missouri of not being able to determine who is eligible and who is not, and I think Illinois is saving millions of dollars on people who've moved out of state, people who've died, people that changed jobs," Sater said. "This is something that needs to be done. ... Having a private contractor that has better data sources than what we have is important."
Speaking in favor of the bill was Jessica Petrie, a registered lobbyist with Maximus, a national company that provides similar governmental services. She said if the department contracts with a third-party vendor, it would still maintain oversight.
"Right now, DSS has to go through a very inefficient, time-consuming and labor-intensive process to verify individuals eligibility data," she said. "They have to go to a lot of different sources to pull the data that they need, and that makes it very difficult for them to verify initial eligibility, which can cause backlogs in both the initial verification process and as well as the ongoing verifications they have to perform."
Jeanette Mott-Oxford, executive director of Empower Missouri, opposed the legislation. In her testimony, she referenced backlogging problems as the Family Support Division reorganized.
"We think that often what you will find in trying to mine data in relation to programs like SNAP, TANF, Medicaid and subsidized childcare, is not that they're committing fraud," she said, "but the chaos of living in poverty means that there's change a lot. Especially addresses change a lot."
Oxford said information she received from AFSCME Council 31, an Illinois organization advocating for unions, and said state employees there found 30 percent of Maximus recommendations for cancellation were in error. In addition, she said 16 percent of recommendations to continue were also in error.
"If I was going to invest money in either hiring a third party verifyer or hire more case workers who would personally interact with someone and get to know them and build a relationship of trust ... I would rather see the money spent on staffing the Family Support Division adequately in which a form of case management could happen where people get to know their clients," she said.