Director's Office

Over the past several months, the division has been considering the Food Stamp Program's simplified reporting option that was introduced in the Farm Bill. We have been talking with staff around the state to hear feedback regarding this option, as well as communicating with states that have implemented this change.

Based on communications with staff and other states, we have decided to move forward with a Simplified Reporting option. In using the FY 03 QA data, we estimate our FS accuracy rate may improve by as much as 2.5% overall. This policy option benefits FS recipients in that it stabilizes benefits, and has shown a marked improvement in accuracy rates in the 20+ states that have adopted the policy.

More than 1,100 elderly Alaskans previously excluded from the Longevity Bonus program are among 7,200 seniors who are now receiving monthly checks of $120 under the new Alaska Senior Assistance Program, established by Governor Frank H. Murkowski.

The governor directed the needs-based program be established to take the place of the bonus program, which was terminated effective this past August. Under the previous program, 18,000 of the state's estimated 44,000 seniors received a monthly check of between $100 and $250. However, the other 26,000 over the age of 65 did not recive any bonus payment. The previous program was based on date of birth criteria only, and did not take into account the personal wealth of an individual.

Greetings All -
I would like to announce the kickoff of our "Better Than Average!" campaign to improve our Food Stamp Program payment accuracy. I know that you've already put a lot of work toward this goal.

I have traveled to many of our offices lately and been impressed with the efforts underway to "scrub" cases, and build the quality of our casework. This gives me great confidence in our collective ability to achieve our campaign goal of having Alaska's Food Stamp error rate be under the national average.

The Governor's Office announced yesterday, September 3, 2003 that all Human Resources (HR) functions (personnel, payroll, classification, labor relations, WorkPlace Alaska etc.) within State Government will be integrated within the Department of Administration.

This essentially means that all current Human Resources staff within the Department of Health and Social Services will be transferred to the Department of Administration and integrated with staff from all other departments. Transfers of staff and functions will occur within the next 1 to 9 months.

Governor Frank H. Murkowski has approved an effort, which began today, to consolidate human resources management and other personnel functions into one cohesive unit within the Division of Personnel in the Department of Administration. Currently, human resources managers are scattered throughout the fourteen departments of the executive branch.

We were hit with the Blaster Worm Friday. The timing couldn't have been much worse for our folks on the Network Services team. When the worm hit, Network Services had already worked all night trying to restore the CC server and half of our Network Services team was in Kenai doing a PC installation. A small team of people were left to do the work of many. Those individuals were:

John Mirelez, Myria Newport, Mike Morris, Sara Nogg, Brady Green and Tammie Rivera who was not only instumental in tackling the Blaster but coordinating the efforts of other staff.

I want to thank those of you who answered the food stamp accuracy survey. Your response was overwhelming! 154 responses were received. That amounts to nearly one third of our total statewide staff. State elections should have that kind of a turnout! When you consider that many of our staff have no direct involvement in eligibility determination or the food stamp program, this is an amazing response rate.

Here are a couple of e-mail responses to the request for suggestions on how to improve the Food Stamp accuracy rate.

E-mail #1

Hello Director Lombardo-

I think your letter was appropriate and correct. As an Eligibility Tech. III in the Coastal unit I have had the opportunity to review several of our Elig. Tech's cases.