AUSTIN – Texas is easing a requirement that most families on food stamps must be interviewed every six months, a step that will relieve pressure on the system for determining who receives state aid, officials said Tuesday.

The state Health and Human Services Commission also has reassigned about 140 veteran eligibility workers in Dallas and Houston to join front-line workers in taking applications and renewals. That should reduce applicants' wait times, officials say.

The more-experienced workers are on temporary loan from their "quality assurance" jobs, in which they review field offices' work and try to spot trends, said commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman.

"Pulling them back in the field really is helping us with the backlog," she said. "We have really made a lot of gains with that."

Still, in September, more than 40 percent of new applications weren't processed within 30 days, as the federal government requires, state Commissioner Tom Suehs reported to federal Food and Nutrition Service officials in a progress report.

The service's regional administrator in Dallas warned in September that if Texas didn't reduce wait times, the state could lose $173 million of federal funds that pay half of the food-stamp program's annual overhead. The federal government pays for all benefits.

Goodman said the state is revising procedures and retraining workers so that 685,000 families won't have to be interviewed next spring and summer, at a six-month interval, to keep their benefits. They could simply fill out and mail in a form reporting changes in income and family composition, she said.

About half of the 2.8 million Texans on food stamps are affected, she said. Until now, the families known as "streamlined reporting" recipients have had to be interviewed twice a year.