Before those on Beacon Hill can convince people to pay more for the government services they receive, they must show they know how to spend the billions for which taxpayers are on the hook already.
Thus state Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, is right to ask the question: Why do more people in Massachusetts receive welfare benefits than in states like New Jersey and Virginia with larger populations?
Baddour has written the office of state Auditor Suzanne Bump to request an audit of the welfare system in the Bay State. A preliminary investigation Baddour conducted on his own found some disturbing statistics about the per-capita distribution of benefits here.
The Bay State has a population of more than 6 million and hands out federally funded benefits to 99,000 recipients per month, according to Baddour. Florida, with a population three times larger and a much higher poverty rate, provides benefits to 101,000 recipients per month — just 2,000 more than Massachusetts. Similarly, Texas provides benefits to about 114,000 people per month, with a population four times that of the commonwealth.
Baddour is pushing to shake up the welfare system in Massachusetts, which he says the public perceives as "broken and in desperate need of repair." An audit is the right place to start, and indeed in his Fiscal Year 2013 budget released Wednesday, Gov. Deval Patrick suggested that the auditor's Bureau of Special Investigations be assigned the task of using data analysis to detect fraud within the welfare system.
The idea was immediately embraced by Bump, who says that in the past, "for every dollar spent on BSI, the commonwealth sees almost $2.50 in identified fraud," and termed the governor's proposal "a great example of collaboration across government to ensure that our public benefits programs are run efficiently and effectively."
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