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http://www.stateline.org/live/
By Melissa Maynard, Stateline Staff Writer
After years of budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and hiring
freezes, the everyday work of state government is piling up. This Stateline series
examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig
themselves out.
Today: Agencies overwhelmed
Wednesday: Anatomy of
a backlog
Thursday: How one agency overcame its backlog
Have your own backlog story? Tell us about it.
On the face of it, the backlog the Hawaii Public Housing
Authority is experiencing seems a simple matter of supply and demand. Some
11,000 families are on the authority’s waiting list, hoping against the odds
that they can get one of only 6,295 public housing units. In a state where
housing is notoriously expensive, the only people with a real shot at getting a
unit are the homeless and survivors of domestic abuse. Even for them, the waiting
can take years. “The waitlist is so extensive and the homeless problem is so
great that a lot of people are getting preference over working families,”
explains Nicholas Birck, chief planner for the Hawaii Public Housing Authority.
“They never make it to the top.”
But there’s another, hidden problem at play in Hawaii’s housing backlog. Lately, the authority hasn’t had enough employees to manage turnover in vacant units. As a result, 310 homes have been sitting empty, even with all the people languishing in waitlist limbo. For many of the vacant units, all it would take is a few simple repairs and a little bit of administrative work to give a family a home — and get the authority’s backlog shrinking rather than growing.
The situation is a byproduct of big budget cuts in Hawaii
and a hiring freeze that wasn’t lifted until earlier this year. A handful of
employees in the housing authority’s property management office retired, and
the hiring freeze made it impossible to fill the vacant positions. For a while,
there was only one person overseeing the office’s far-flung portfolio spanning
four islands. “It was a very difficult position for her to be in,” Birck says.
Today, the office’s ranks are back up to six employees, but both the number of
vacant units and the size of the waiting list have continued to grow since a
state audit
first brought attention to the issue in June.
Hawaii isn’t the only place where the everyday tasks of
state government are piling up. A Stateline investigation found that agencies
across the country are seeing growing backlogs of work, as increased demand for
state services in a weak economy bumps up against the states’ efforts to cut
their payroll costs. From public housing to crime labs, restaurant inspections
to court systems, four years of layoffs, furloughs, hiring freezes and unfilled
vacancies are beginning to take their toll. At its most benign, the result for
taxpayers is a longer wait for things like marriage licenses or birth
certificates. At its most dangerous, growing backlogs are threatening the lives
of vulnerable children, elders and disabled persons, as overwhelmed protective
services agencies face delays investigating reports of abuse and neglect.
The size of some backlogs growing in state government is
staggering: Read more: http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=618752
This Stateline series examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig themselves out.
http://www.stateline.org/live/
This Stateline series examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig themselves out.
http://www.stateline.org/live/
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[20111213 Melissa Maynard Stateline Short staffed and budget
bare]
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