Dear Staff,
The recent letter from USDA highlights the food stamp accuracy crisis that has been developing in the last few years. Upon my appointment as your Director, I immediately assessed the threat to our funding from this impending crisis. I informed our management at my first statewide managers meeting that we must turn the tide on food stamp errors, before our agency funding was put at risk. DPA cannot afford to absorb the one million dollar penalty that is projected to occur at the end of fiscal year '04, if we cannot substantially improve our food stamp error rate.
Equally as important, we have committed to the Governor that we will improve our accuracy and timeliness as part of our enhanced customer service. The Governor has incorporated these goals into the statewide objectives for the Murkowski Administration. The Governor will be looking to us to deliver on our promise to provide better service. Part of the proof that we are doing our best to meet our performance goals will be improvements in our accuracy rate.
As USDA Region X Director Dennis Stewart points out in his letter, we do not have the luxury of time to improve.
We must act swiftly and decisively. We already know a great deal about our accuracy problems and what it will take to fix them. The trick is closing the gap between that knowledge and real remedial action.
We intend to start today with swift corrective measures to act on our problems with accuracy. Your senior managers are all committed to decisive steps to improve our performance and get quick results. Our new food stamp reinvestment plan, which the federal government requires we file detailing our future efforts, is appropriately entitled,"Saving our Bacon". We will not end calendar year '03 with the State of Alaska in the shame of dead last in food stamp accuracy.
While there are accuracy rate-related problems we can address immediately, there are also things we do not know. We count on you, our staff, to step forward with honesty to help us fix our error rate. We need your experience, knowledge and proposed solutions. Please answer the online survey we have created and contribute to our efforts raise our food stamp accuracy rate.
Remember, this is not just about making the State of Alaska look good. You're helping us Save Our Bacon. In these times of tight revenues and budget deficits, the job you help save, may be your own.
Thank you in advance for pitching in. I know that you have fixed accuracy problems in the past. Together, we can do it again!
Click here to read the letter.
Click here to take the survey.
Sincerely,
Anthony M. Lombardo, Esq.
Director