Lawmakers court trouble

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The state Department of Social Services has taken it on the chin in the past few years. State leaders have slashed this essential agency, which protects abused children, by 33 percent — from $120 million in 2001 to $80 million now.

Things have gotten so bad that the department now faces $8 million or more in fines for failing to meet federal standards. Those fines would only plunge the agency deeper into crisis. And lawmakers may cut the agency by an additional $5 million next year.

Officials say the agency, which has a wide range of responsibilities, is failing to meet federal goals for adoption and job training/placement for welfare recipients.

The department has eliminated 20 percent of its adoption workers, The (Columbia) State reported. As a result, adoptions take an average of almost four years in South Carolina. The federal goal is about two years.

Likewise, the agency is failing to find jobs for welfare recipients or enroll them in job-training classes. Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the program that replaced welfare, requires states to have 50 percent of recipients in classes or jobs. Some South Carolina counties are failing to meet that goal.

Of even greater concern is whether the agency has the staff to protect neglected or abused children. The track record of the agency already is poor: 112 abused or neglected children in South Carolina have died since 1994 even after coming into contact with state social workers responsible for their welfare.

Those children died at a time when the agency's staffing was far closer to adequacy. In 2001, the agency had almost 5,000 employees. Now, 3,600 work at the department. Severe understaffing could put the lives of abused and neglected children in even greater jeopardy today.

Meanwhile, the number of South Carolinians qualifying for food stamps has increased from 305,000 in 2001 to 485,000 today while the agency has cut caseworkers. Food-stamp case loads have jumped to an unmanageable 700 recipients to every worker.

This is an agency that could desperately use some leadership from Gov. Mark Sanford and the Legislature. Unfortunately, this hard-pressed agency has too few friends in the General Assembly.

The state would not be in this precarious position if lawmakers had approved an increase in the state's cigarette tax, which is one of the lowest in the nation. But lawmakers refused this reasonable solution.

South Carolina's congressional delegation could try to prevent the federal government from fining the Department of Social Services when every dollar is so desperately needed.

But ultimately state lawmakers have to take responsibility for this department that has suffered to a far greater extent from legislative neglect than other state agencies. Especially when it comes to abused children, lawmakers are courting trouble by the chronic underfunding of the state Department of Social Services.