A legislative committee on Thursday approved a new contract for the Alabama Department of Human Resources that would provide quality assurance for the state’s SNAP and TANF eligibility systems.
Jennifer Bush, an attorney with DHR, told the Contract Review Committee that a quality assurance contractor is a federal requirement. The contract is valued at $12 million.
Representative Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, questioned the steep cost of past contracts to update and implement the state’s new SNAP program and efforts to mitigate EBT fraud.
“Are we seeing any benefit to all this money? We’re spending a lot of money to try and come up with ways to track EBT cards and stop the theft and make sure people are eligible,” Pringle said.
Bush said DHR has begun building its own computer eligibility systems and needs a quality assurance contractor to ensure the systems are built properly and efficiently.
“We’re spending $12 million to ensure that the person we paid to write the program did it right?” Pringle asked. “I’m just stunned. When you start adding it up, we were looking at $7 million, $36 million, $6 billion, $2.8 million, $9 million, $9.25 million, $23.6 million, $4 million, $5.7 million, $12 million. That’s a lot of money that we’re spending behind the scenes on SNAP benefits to make sure that they’re properly administered.”
Stan Landers, special assistant to the DHR commissioner, said the agency’s recent contracts and anti-fraud initiatives have produced results. He said efforts to detect and prevent fraud are already making an impact.
“Each one of those contracts you just mentioned, all separate and apart, a lot of those that we have implemented recently have to do with fraud and trying to mitigate that fraud. You’re asking if that’s had any sort of effect. The answer is a resounding yes,” Landers said.
Landers said several of the agency’s recent investments required significant funding but ultimately succeeded in stopping the fraudulent activity they were designed to address.
“Some of these things that we’ve implemented, that cost millions of dollars, you are correct about that, stopped all of that. That stopped, and it took a lot. We were one of the first states to do that,” Landers said.
Landers defended the cost of the agency’s anti-fraud efforts but said the contract before lawmakers was a separate federally required project related to Alabama’s SNAP modernization efforts.
“A lot of the things you just talked about have nothing to do with this particular contract. This contract was mandated by the federal government for us to develop and implement our new SNAP system,” Landers said.
Landers said the system was required to replace the state’s aging SNAP technology infrastructure.
“Over the past 15 years or so, we’ve been setting money aside with the help of certain senators, Senator Orr being one of them, to try to get that system put in place so that he can pass some of his bills that he wants to pass,” Landers said.
