Iowa families paid double in welfare mistake

Iowa families receiving welfare benefits this week will receive double their expected monthly payment, but like most such windfalls it's too good to be true.

“It was a mistake, it was an error,” Roger Munns, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, said Monday afternoon.

Munns said clients in the Family Investment Program (FIP), the basic welfare system, are receiving both a traditional check and a debit-style card loaded with their monthly benefit amount. The DHS planned to switch this month from checks to the swipe-card system, as food stamp benefits have been distributed since 2003.

Benefit cards were mailed Dec. 28 to 13,380 families, at an average of $327 per family.

“The information technology people simply failed to shut down the system to write checks,” and they were mailed Thursday, Munns said.

An additional 3,000 families didn't receive the double payments because their payments are deposited directly to their bank accounts or because they were not scheduled to receive electronic payments.

The department is following up with a letter to each recipient warning them to return the extra check, Munns said.

“Either give us our checks back, or if they use both they lose their February benefits,” he said. “We're going to be depending on you folks (the media) and letters to tell everyone about it.

In November, the DHS mailed checks worth $5,861,556 to 17,891 households, an average of $327.63 per family.