Capital Public Radio’s Kelley Weiss explored how cuts to California’s Supplemental Security Income were impacting older disabled Californians and, in a second story, the lack of oversight in the massive state program. According to Weiss, the state doesn’t track how the money is spent by recipients or whether the $845 a month is enough to live on. Weiss even found recipients who admitted using the money to buy everything from beer to crack cocaine.
When Weiss questioned the director of California’s Department of Social Services, which oversees the state’s portion of SSI, about audits or reports that evaluated whether the program is working, he had a somewhat surprising answer:
“I don’t have any, I don’t have any background on this…yeah, we’ll have to set up a different time for that.”
