A Maryland agency has bungled the distribution of temporary state-funded disability checks, giving benefits to low-income residents years after they stopped being eligible for them, according to a recent audit. The Family Investment Administration, part of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, lacks a system that alerts them when unqualified residents continue to receive monthly checks, the report said. In one test of 20 recipients, the audit found two cases of ineligible recipients who were getting checks every month.
| The report also found: |
| — The Family Investment Administration was sanctioned $423,563 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for errors made regarding the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. |
| — The agency is not independently verifying required data such as income and Social Security numbers by cross-checking them against applications for a program that helps low-income residents pay their electric bills. |
| — While the FIA used system alerts to detect potential fraud by identifying 28,700 instances of a missing or unverified Social Security number on program applications, cases were not “always investigated and resolved in a timely and adequate manner.” |
“We’re finding some holes in the process where we have a couple examples of people who’ve been receiving benefits for an extended period of time,” said Tom Barnickel, deputy legislative auditor for the state’s Office of Legislative Audits.
He said the audit did not determine how much money is being spent on unqualified recipients.
FIA’s Temporary Disability Assistance Program is a state-funded program in which eligible low-income disabled adults with a report from a licensed medical practitioner can receive $185 per month while in the process of applying for federal aid such as Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Income.
An individual cannot receive benefits for more than nine months in a 36-month period, according to state regulations, though benefits may be extended if the recipient is still in the process of trying to secure federal benefits.
“We think we need a better process to comb through these to make sure that the individuals are still actively pursuing the benefits,” Barnickel said. “There’s got to be some systematic basis for doing this.”
In one case, a recipient of state disability benefits was denied federal benefits in 2003, something that should have stopped state disability checks from coming in. But they continued for seven years until auditors brought attention to it in August, the report said. In another case, a recipient received $4,200 from the state even after being approved for federal benefits, at which time state stipends should also have been discontinued.
An average of 19,000 people received a total of $41.6 million in state disability payments in fiscal 2010, according to the report.
