MONTICELLO, NY — In the wake of Randy Parker being placed on administrative leave from the Sullivan County Division of Health and Family Services (DHFS), the new acting commissioner, Joe Todora, and deputy commissioner, William Moon, said they are seeking to remove redundancies from the process of applying for services.

Parker was removed from his office because of a backlog of applications of the federal Home Emergency Assistance Program (HEAP), created by situations which, according to legislator Cindy Gieger, predate his tenure. HEAP, along with Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance (TA) were the subject of a review by officials in Albany, and the review was mentioned at the Family Services Committee meeting on March 12. These programs are administered by the Department of Family Services (DFS), which is one of six departments under the DHFS umbrella.

The review was conducted by the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA). There were many recommendations and corrective measures outlined in the review, and shortfalls were enumerated. Regarding HEAP, the review said applications were being processed in accordance with state law “with a few exceptions.” Regarding SNAP, the review said, the current procedure for processing applications is “not consistent with federal and state regulations.” Regarding TA the review said, “eligibility determinations are consistently not made within the required timeframes.” OTDA said that corrective action plans to address various issues are required.

Todora said the department is examining current procedures and policies, with the goal of having the process work more quickly, so applicants know sooner if they are going to be granted or denied the benefit being applied for.

He said “It’s not unusual for me to get five phone calls about the same person,” and there is a feeling that “we don’t get back to people.”

He said communications need to be improved and, “Hopefully we’ll go from being an organization that is constantly putting out fires to being an organization that is doing the daily work and providing services.”

Gieger continued, “My preliminary review of the state office [finds] there are structural problems within programs that should have been addressed a long time ago, so now we’re moving forward with some streamlining, eliminating duplicate processes that were allowed to continue year after year.”

Deputy commissioner Moon then gave his assessment of the progress in the department. He said “We’re starting to peel away what I would describe as excess layers of process. We found this in the HEAP program when I personally started taking phone calls and interacting daily with that staff… we were way past the necessary elements of determining initial or emergency HEAP applications.”

He said there were staffing issues that will need to be addressed at some point, but he and Tedora feel that the “peeling away of excess processes” noted above needs to be accomplished first.

He said the department is undergoing a culture change and part of that involves clearing up staff confusion and frustration over “bottlenecks created by our own designs.”

Gieger, who is chair of the Health and Family Services Committee, says that the problems in DFS date back years. She said that several legislators had called for state oversight and review of programming months ago, which was never done until Parker brought Moon on board and a comprehensive state review was completed.

Gieger also noted that staffing levels were deficient after positions requested by Parker were defunded in 2014. The state review also noted a “high rate of absenteeism” among staff, which left remaining staff to meet the program requirements. She believes that Parker experienced pushback over the last several years due to changes that included carrying forth state-mandated elimination of fraud, waste and abuse, and that the process of fixing a broken system could result in lowering Medicaid payments to the county. She said these changes and those to come are vital to accomplishing the goal of improving policies and addressing staff workloads while improving the delivery of services to the needy.