Miracyle Thompson, a pregnant Baltimore County mother of two little boys who have sickle cell disease, was skipping meals and battling with angry doctors over unpaid bills. Her husband's sales job wasn't bringing in enough money to support the growing family. Seeking help, she applied in February for state food and medical assistance.
Federal law requires that those emergency benefits be approved within 30 days. A month ticked by, and then a letter from the state Department of Human Resources arrived: "An agency delay has occurred beyond our control." She'd have to keep waiting. By late April, she and a group of attorneys for the poor decided to sue.
Thompson is one of thousands of Marylanders who have waited longer than the legal limit for assistance approval. As of March, there were about 7,100 overdue medical assistance applications from children and parents, and 4,100 backlogged food assistance requests, according to the most recently available data from human resources.
The bad economy has exacerbated an already overburdened approval process. Assistance offices are being flooded with more needy applicants at a time when the state's dire financial straits prompted a state hiring freeze that until recently deprived the department of the workers necessary to ensure timely approval.
"This is a serious economic situation that we're all in, and working families who are eligible for help should not be bearing the disproportionate share of the crisis," said Debra Gardner of the Public Justice Center, one of the groups that filed Thompson's lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court. "To have to skip meals when you're pregnant because there's nobody to move your paperwork is a terrible shame."
Advocates don't want a protracted legal battle; they're hoping the suit results in a quicker approval process.
Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald said her department's response to record-high applications has been "slower than normal." She said the federal government recently identified Maryland, which by some measures is the wealthiest state in the nation, as one of the neediest in terms of food stamp applications. Active cases have ballooned to 456,526 last month from 285,000 four years ago, and medical and temporary cash assistance also have seen steep increases.
About a month ago, Gov. Martin O'Malley exempted human resources from the state's hiring freeze to add more processing agents, a part of the department that has 1,682 workers and 214 vacancies.
Donald said the department is also trying to speed up the process by accepting some applications over the phone rather that always requiring them in person. People also can check their eligibility for government help and print out forms to fill out at home before heading into local social services offices.
"We take it very seriously to be responsive to people who apply," Donald said. "They don't come in because they want to. They come because they have needs."
Thompson said she saw the department's thin staffing firsthand. When she called to check on her application, she said she talked with a testy claims administrator overwhelmed with work. "If you could only see everything I have on my desk," Thompson said the administrator told her, "You'd understand why it's taking so long."
At her apartment in Owings Mills, Thompson, 20, was facing her own stresses. She said she had always just barely gotten by without public aid, but her two boys, ages 2 and 1, are eating more, further strapping finances. She said her boys never went without food, but she sometimes did, though she is eight months' pregnant.
Her husband's job as a telephone salesman does not provide medical benefits. She graduated from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia and wants to enroll in nursing school after her baby is born, she said. Because of her pregnancy, her own state medical assistance was approved right away, giving her access to health care through Medicaid. But doctors for her boys began calling to tell her they could no longer see her kids until they, too, were covered, because of unpaid bills. She searched pharmacy after pharmacy for free antibiotics and affordable medication.
On top of those day-to-day struggles, Thompson said she worried about when - if ever - her public assistance approval would come. "I'd go to bed thinking about it, and wake up thinking about it," she said.
Although Maryland has seen some of the country's biggest increases in assistance applications, processing delays are becoming increasingly common.
Laura Redman, an attorney with the New York-based National Center for Law and Economic Justice, said her group has sued over similar delays in Indiana and in several New York counties (that state has a regional public assistance system). Redman is also involved in the Maryland lawsuit and said the state "has a long history of not addressing delays."
"Things are only getting worse," she said.
Redman's group successfully negotiated settlements in the Buffalo, N.Y., area and in the Long Island, N.Y., area, she said. Donald said she also hopes for an amicable solution.
The lawsuit has already worked for Thompson: The same day it was filed, a Human Resources official called to let her know she'd been approved for food and medical assistance.