Some Fresno County workers help low-income people get aid. Turns out they need it, too

In 2009 a gallon of gas cost about $2.70, a pound of hamburger was $2.37 and the average price of a movie ticket in America was $7.50.

That same year Elisa Delgado earned $32,760 as an eligibility worker for Fresno County.

Today gas is nearly $5 a gallon, movie tickets are $9 or more, and a pound of ground beef is about $4.59. Yet Delgado is still taking home as much as she did 12 years ago.

That is the unfortunate reality she and other Fresno County eligibility workers find themselves in. It is a shameful situation when one considers how California officials just announced the state surplus for 2022 budget year is a whopping $31 billion.

That incredible figure occurs despite the pandemic that affected the livelihoods of many on the lower income rungs who saw their jobs reduced or cut in response to COVID. Those are the very people that eligibility workers like Delgado are meant to help get back on their feet with government-supported programs such as CalFresh and Medi-Cal.

Yet Fresno County is experiencing 100% turnover in eligibility workers. Not only have these employees not received wage increases for years, but their workload has dramatically risen. People are quitting because of being overloaded, Delgado told Bee staff writer Yesenia Amaro.

Delgado told Amaro that eligibility workers are given limits by supervisors for how much time to spend with clients. “They’ll say, ‘OK, push for 12 minutes.’... In other words, cut them off,” she said.

“We feel like robots.”

Talk about job satisfaction.

Adding insult to the injury, her health benefits cost $7 per paycheck when she began working in 2006. Today she has to pay $220 per paycheck.

No increases

Delfinio Neira, director of the county Social Services Department, said counties have not received “an increase from the state for the cost for an individual employee for over 20 years.”

Counties in the San Joaquin Valley do not generate enough local tax revenues to make up shortfalls from the state, Neira said. So “Valley counties are especially reliant on this funding to adequately staff and compensate employees,” he wrote in a response to questions by Amaro.

A state Social Services spokesman told Amaro that the verification process has been simplified with technological advances and some processing improvements. And he said funding decisions are not “solely in the hands of California,” most likely meaning there are federal regulations on how money could be used.

Even so, California’s 2021-22 budget surplus was between $38 billion and $75 billion — differences between the Legislative analyst’s figuring and Gov. Newsom’s number. Add it to this next year’s, and it is real money.

There has been much talk about improving California’s physical infrastructure — roads, bridges, waterways, transportation hubs.

But the human infrastructure also cannot be ignored. It is embarrassing that a state as rich as California is still paying someone like Elisa Delgado the wage she earned in 2009.

This is a call to Fresno’s Assembly representatives Joaquin Arambula and Jim Patterson and state Sen. Andreas Borgeas to push for more funding for what are state programs operated by the county.

Fresno County eligibility workers should not find themselves in the same straits as their clients. Yet, for some, that is exactly what is happening.

This story was originally published November 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.