Apparently when you file a complaint with the Department of Agriculture about how long SNAP cases are taking to be worked in your state (and the unprofessionalism that came with constant copies and pastes of irrelevant information by the HHS Ombudsman’s office when I attempted to file complaints with them most of the time, which only goes to further prove my point), they expedite working your case — I got a call from someone at the local office last night when I had ironically been hunting for the word office in my mind to continue to post about these people, and they told me that not only would my family continue to be eligible for benefits for the next six months but that our benefits would increase to the tune of something like thirty dollars each month, and they apologized for how long it had taken to get to my family’s completed renewal to begin with. I kept my mouth closed but did not accept the apology, as our benefits would not even have been renewed in the first place in anything remotely resembling a timely manner if I had not constantly complained about Texas HHSC, let alone continued to post on their Facebook and Twitter pages about how they were incapable of doing their jobs. This is a hollow victory given how much effort had to be put into it.

I put in my family’s completed renewal for SNAP benefits on December 2nd, which was the day that the state website let me fill the renewal out to start with. Me finishing these things quickly is par for the course.

At the time of this post, it is January 9th. It has been more than a month since I put this application in, and absolutely nothing has been done about it. The state can sure make time to respond to complaints that I make about it on the HHS Ombudsman’s website, as can they make time to give me three or four different answers to queries when I call the state information help line, the HHS Ombudsman, or they call me (more than once). Because of the utter incompetence of all of this, I’ve resumed filing regular complaints about the handling of my family’s SNAP case on the HHS Ombudsman’s website, although I honestly do expect these complaints and all of my queries to start getting ignored at some point as the state of Texas continues to refuse to deal with whatever problem is causing this. Should my family’s benefits actually lapse because of inaction of the state, I won’t hesitate to contact Legal Aid, and I won’t hesitate to contact whoever I need to contact in the Department of Agriculture to let them know in as much detail as I can provide about how taxpayer money is going unspent — or being misused by the state — while eligible Texans are being denied benefits because of the state’s refusal to process, or look at, applications and renewals for those benefits.

If we lose benefits in February as a result of willful state inaction, I’ll swiftly contact the two named agencies.