Michigan officials reported that “human error” was the cause of 85,000 recipients of state food assistance finding no money deposited to their state-issued debit cards on Friday.
Michigan’s Department of Technology, Management & Budget spent all day Friday attempting to correct the error and get the state aid credited to the Bridge Card debit cards, but officials could not say for sure when all 85,000 recipients would have access to their allotments.
By late morning, some 40,000 cards had been credited, and officials hoped to fill all cards by day’s end, Friday.
According to spokesman Kurt Weiss:
It’s 85,000 card holders and their family members. The average card holder services about four to five folks in their family, roughly about $500 on average, about $540 gets put on to that card each month for them…
Grocers and retailers across the state who are servicing these customers are put in a bad situation because they are, you know, having to turn folks away and that’s certainly not the position we want to put those retailers in and we certainly issued our apologies to those folks as well.
The problem affected about one-tenth of the 1.8 million Michiganders on the state’s Bridge Cards.
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