BY JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — For more than a year, Pawtucket’s George Wiley Center has been advocating for a series of measures that would make it easier for Rhode Islanders to apply for and receive food stamps from the federal government.

The group, and low-income residents in need of assistance, won an apparent victory Monday when the Carcieri administration announced that it was adopting many of those policies, including making the application shorter and simpler, allowing people to apply by phone rather than in person, requiring people to prove their continuing eligibility once a year rather than every six months, and eliminating the “asset test” in which ownership of a home or automobile could disqualify some people from eligibility.
Gary Alexander, director of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said the state is also moving to hire another nine employees to process applications for the food stamp program, now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
Henry Shelton, coordinator of the Wiley Center, said the group does not believe nine additional  employees are enough, and had asked the state to hire 40 more workers. “There’s a little bit of a shortage there,” Shelton said. He pointed out that the federal government picks up the tab for 50 percent of their salary.
Food stamp workers are already working overtime processing current claims, he said, fearing that nine more employees may not be enough to handle the thousands of new applications that are expected with the rule changes, which Shelton said also increases the amount of income a family can have and still remain eligible for the program, from 130 percent of the federal poverty level to 165 percent.
Shelton also bemoaned the fact that the Department of Human Services did not file required documents for emergency rule changes with the Secretary of State’s office, noting that the changes can not take effect until it does.
Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe said, “we have taken every one of (Shelton’s) concerns into consideration and addressed them properly.
She said that the only reason the department did not file the emergency rule changes is that the person who handles filings for the Secretary of State’s office was out with the flu on Monday. She said the papers will be filed upon that person’s return.  “We are moving forward with it as quickly as possible,” she said.
Without the emergency rule changes, Kempe said, it could take months of hearings and other bureaucracy to accomplish the changes to the program.
Besides the nine new food stamp processors, Kempe said there are 10 more people being hired to process applications for medical assistance. “So right now there are 19 positions that are posted to assist people with getting them enrolled in the proper programs.
Alexander said the department has reached out to state employee unions to expedite the hiring of the new workers.
“We all recognize the need to have employees in place and properly trained to manage the public’s needs,” the director said in a press release. 
“The goal of these initiatives is to ensure that eligible individuals and families are receiving the necessary nutritional means to live a healthy lifestyle, provide information to Rhode Island families in need, and increase the federal dollars coming into Rhode Island’s economy,” Alexander said. “Rhode Island is working hard to ease access to food assistance for recently unemployed individuals, elderly populations, and individuals with disabilities.  Program simplification is the quickest way to serve those most in need.”
To get the word out to newly-eligible populations, specifically the recently unemployed, DHS has partnered with the Department of Labor and Training to provide information on SNAP to those receiving unemployment benefits, Alexander said. The Department of Labor and Training will now include informational brochures on the SNAP program in its mailings to new unemployment insurance recipients. They expect to distribute approximately 20,000 of these brochures over the next month.