Lest we get too efficient, the Legislature’s Rules Review Committee told the Department of Social Services they can’t just use the Internet to inform the public about welfare payments and health care reimbursement rates:
Senator Craig Kennedy, a Democrat from Yankton, and Senator Lance Russell, a Republican from Hot Springs, first raised the stop sign against using only the internet.
Kennedy, a lawyer who said he’s pretty good using computers, said the websites were in obscure locations. He said he struggled to find one of the data sets.
“I think we best not forget our responsibility to the public that we need to be transparent in what we do out here,” Kennedy said
One of the department’s top officials said using the internet was a way to reduce duplication.
Deputy Secretary Brenda Tidball-Zeltinger said department staff would be “happy” to consider the lawmakers’ comments [Bob Mercer, “S.D. Legislators Block Social Services from Relying Only on Websites,” KELO-TV, 2019.09.09].
Interestingly, the Department of Social Services reported that the rule changes that included this rejecting online publication changes would have had no fiscal impact.
In related reading, I go look around the DSS website and find that South Dakota gave $1,312,074 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in July to help 5,311 children in 2,932 families. That’s down a snudge from the past three July TANF amounts, the recent high coming in July 2017, when we helped 5,406 children in 3,000 families with $1,337,584.
About the 5406 children helped by TANF: That’s 5406 out of the approx. 34,000 children in poverty in South Dakota. Also, I feel compelled to point out that, (1) before it became a block grant, the help went to 13,000 South Dakota children. This should be cautionary, at a minimum, about what happens when important assistance is put into block grants. And (2) for three years now, TANF payments, which help the state’s most destitute children, have not received a cost-of-living adjustment, even though funds were readily available. A 2.5% adjustment this year would have used only 2% of a TANF fund held by the feds for these children.
OH, my goodness!! Seventy six hundred poor, needy kids got kicked to the curb and the state didn’t dip into it’s emergency fund to help them? Does anyone in power have any remorse about this? Don’t the state officers in charge of TANF know what government is for? This is a travesty of monumental proportions and it takes a liberal blog to expose the corruption. #deplorable
The largest impoverished group in every part of the USA and as a whole is children. The GOP wasn’t always the party of cruelty that it has become.