Short-staffed and Budget-bare, Overwhelmed State Agencies are Unable to Keep Up

By Melissa Maynard, Stateline Staff Writer, Pew Center on the States

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.

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:

• The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which investigates teacher misconduct, has 3,240 open cases, involving allegations of teachers doing everything from committing felonies to sexually abusing children. More than 1,000 of those cases have been open for more than a year. The commission has struggled to keep up with its work amid state-level hiring freezes — which until recently prevented it from filling vacancies — as well as furloughs that had been keeping employees home three days per month.

• In Arizona, the state child protective services program is working through a backlog of 9,903 cases that have been flagged as “non-active,” a situation the agency blames on high levels of turnover and staff vacancies. This year, at least seven children who have had previous contact with Arizona’s child protective services system have died of abuse or neglect. Caseloads are 50 to 60 percent above state standards, with many investigations remaining open for more than six months. Investigators receive two to five reports each week but are only able to close one. A Child Safety Task Force convened by Republican Governor Jan Brewer is expected to provide recommendations about how to improve the system later this month.

• Iowa has fallen behind on annual safety inspections of elevators and boilers across the state, according to a September audit. Iowa Workforce Development, the agency responsible for conducting the inspections, was found to be as many as nine years delinquent on elevator inspections; 68 of 100 elevators reviewed by auditors hadn’t received an annual inspection.

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Short-staffed and Budget-bare, Overwhelmed State Agencies are Unable to Keep Up

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