Two more state employees fired after accessing Texans’ private information

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Two more employees from the state Health and Human Services Commission have been fired for accessing the private information of Texans seeking public assistance in the state’s Medicaid, food stamps and other programs, the agency confirmed Monday.

While there are no details on these latest firings, they occurred after the state notified more than 61,000 people who either applied or received assistance between June 2021 and December 2024 that their private information was improperly accessed by state workers.

Of those fired so far, three employees last year had their cases referred to local prosecutors. And two of those referred employees were found by the agency to have changed personal information numbers on Lone Star food stamp cards and made illegal purchases.

The firings bring to nine the total of HHSC employees terminated in the last year for accessing private information without a legitimate reason.

Earlier Monday, during the Senate Committee of Finance hearing, Chair Joan Huffman, R-Houston, briefly asked HHSC Commissioner Cecile Young if it was true that more than 8,000 HHSC employees had access to private information.

Young confirmed it was true and made her first public comments about the breach the Texas Tribune first reported on Jan. 17.

“The privacy breach, as you know, was something that was a new novel pattern that our own employees were doing,” Young said. “One thing I wanted to make clear is oftentimes when you hear someone breaching privacy it’s coming from the outside. And in this case, sadly, it was actually coming from our employees.”

The discussion followed an extension discussion about state employees still working from home as the agency presented details about its $94 billion budget. Agency officials confirmed that 40% of its employees who handle Medicaid, food stamp and other public assistance program applications, do work from home, prompting Huffman to comment on how that could pose a problem.

“You never know who's walking through a room, and so forth, and they look down and say, ‘Wow, you have access to a bunch of Social Security numbers!’ ” Huffman said, “You know what that’s worth? I’m assuming it’s worth a lot of money.“

Last fall, the Legislative Budget Board surveyed 96 agencies about the impact on state agencies allowing employees to work at home. The survey, which did not include public colleges and universities, asked agencies a variety of questions about the positive and negative impact of allowing employees to work from home.

Of those, 29 agencies reported that remote work has had a positive impact on reducing costs. Some 80 agencies reported that remote work helped them retain employees or aided in recruiting new staff. But when it came to productivity, the results were mixed. About half the agencies (46) reported that they saw improved productivity, 40 agencies reported no impact and 10 agencies chose not to respond.

State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said from the public’s point of view, the move to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic has done nothing but reduce their access to government services. Getting help is now more difficult as certain agencies have limited hours in person where staff are working in the office to meet with Texans.

“If you ask the customer that’s dealing with remote scheduled people, I think the response would be an overwhelming ‘It ain’t working,’ ” Perry said.

Several senators pointed out how they’re keeping a close watch on remote work, particularly when so much money has gone to new state office buildings.

“We lease a lot of buildings across the state of Texas,” state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said. “I think that we have to look at our office space utilization, and so if we say some of the agencies have answered, ‘We're more efficient from home, OK, then we can get rid of a bunch of lease space, but I would say that our constituents would say, ‘Maybe you're not as as efficient from home if I go to the office to get some kind of face-to-face service and it's only open two days a week.’”

Finance Chair Huffman indicated how she’d like to see tighter controls on remote work.

“If they have to have a remote (worker), they need to tell us, the appropriators, why it is that they have a specific need for that rather than that be the status quo,” she said.