Dear friends,

Our department recently received an award for achieving the highest payment accuracy rate in food stamps among the fourteen largest urban counties in a six-state region of the Midwest. Hamilton County’s accuracy rate of 98.19 percent in Federal Fiscal year 2008 was the best of the largest counties in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. 

The rate was a more than 6 percent improvement over 2007’s 91.71 percent rate. Moreover, this is the third time the agency has received awards from the BIG TEN Conference in the past 10 years. The BIG TEN is a federal, state and local effort in the Midwest Region of the Food and Nutrition Service to improve Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment accuracy and customer service. 

This might sound a little bureaucratic to some of you. But, I assure you, it is important. Think about this: Hamilton County issues more than $11 million in food assistance payments each month. Currently, 104,000 county residents – one in eight – receive food stamps. 

That is a tremendous amount of work determining eligibility and staying on top of payments. This is about paying attention to detail, conducting thorough interviews and checking and re-checking to make sure you have it right. Our accuracy rate ensures taxpayer money is spent appropriately and that people who need help are getting the right amount. It also helps determine an agency’s funding to carry out public assistance programs. Federal officials will penalize or reward financially based on an agency’s accuracy rate.  

Our success speaks to the dedication, hard work and commitment of workers in our Family and Adult Assistance section. It is appropriate that we highlight them right now because they are working harder than ever. In addition to 104,000 food stamp recipients, we have 135,000 Medicaid recipients and 25,000 Ohio Works First recipients. At a time we are seeing record numbers of people turn to us for help, our staff continues to shrink and those left behind are literally forced to do more with less. 

I cannot say enough about how proud I am of our staff. We are not going to get a lot of public recognition for this, because it is, indeed, a bit bureaucratic. Nevertheless, it is important and I wanted to publicly acknowledge the award and say thanks to my staff.  

With our food stamp population reaching one in eight county residents and growing, it is important that we do our best to ensure we are as accurate as possible. I promise you we will.

Sincerely,

Moira