Louisiana’s budget crisis jeopardizes the state’s food stamps program
25th June 2018 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
Louisiana could become the only state that doesn’t participate in the federal food stamp program. That’s unless a compromise is reached on the state’s sales tax in the legislature’s third special session, which began early last week. The session ends on June 27, before the new fiscal year starts in July.
Based on threatened cuts to its budget, the state’s Department of Children and Family Services may not have enough money in January to run an annual $1.4 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Louisiana residents depend on SNAP, with almost one in five using it, compared with the national average of nearly one in eight.
“The legislature’s considering a 24-percent cut, or $34 million, to our agency’s budget,” DCFS Secretary Marketa Garner Walters said last week. SNAP, which costs the state $67.4 million to operate a year, would take the hit.
Walters said her agency will have to cut a program of magnitude, rather than trimming a number of already lean programs further. DCFS sustained huge cuts to its budget during the eight-year Jindal administration, which ended in January 2016, and has had waves of layoffs in the last decade.
“There’s no excess in any of our programs to trim now,” Walters said. DCFS oversees foster care and child support, and it handles child abuse claims.
“For SNAP to continue, the legislature will need to approve another half penny in the state sales tax,” Walters said. Smaller proposals, including one for a third of a cent, wouldn’t be enough.
“Child welfare programs have sustained so many cuts in past years that any more would put children in danger,” DCFS spokeswoman Catherine Heitman said last week.
DCFS will have enough money to distribute food stamps through December. The cost of administering SNAP in Louisiana is shared half and half between the state and feds.
“SNAP provides over $1.4 billion in pure federal dollars to households in Louisiana,” Heitman said. “It supports retailers, farmers and fishermen, creates jobs and is a huge economic engine.”
SNAP’s overall impact in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes was an estimated $488.2 million, last year. In the four parishes, known as the Orleans region, 865 retailers particiticipated in SNAP at the start of this year. Across the state, 25,000 jobs are fully or partly supported by the program, Heitman said.
Every dollar in new SNAP benefits results in $1.80 in economic activity, according to the USDA.
Nationally, SNAP recipients and program costs have declined from their peaks in 2013. But in Louisiana, an average 877,324 recipients in the first 11 months of fiscal 2017-18 through May were three percent higher than the state’s 2013-14 average, according to DCFS. Part of that increase was related to job losses along the Gulf after crude oil prices dropped in 2014, Heitman said.
Statewide, the average monthly SNAP benefit per person this fiscal year is $125. “Perceptions are that these benefits are huge, but they really aren’t,” Walters said. “They’re intended to supplement and improve diets.”
As of late last year, 169,458 residents of the Orleans region, including Jefferson, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, received food stamps, Heitman said. That amounted to one in five people. In mid-2017, the federally estimated population of Orleans Parish alone was 393,292.
Other parts of Louisiana rely on food stamps even more. The Monroe, Lafayette, Alexandria and Shreveport regions, as defined under the program, all have higher shares of people on SNAP than the Orleans area. Twenty-five percent of residents in Monroe and nearby use food stamps.
Heitman warned that if Louisiana eliminates SNAP, residents won’t be able to apply for federal DSNAP payments during disasters. DSNAP helps eligible households, that aren’t receiving SNAP, buy groceries if they lost income or suffered damage in a disaster. Residents apply at DSNAP sites for electronic benefit transfer cards that are activated within three days.
If SNAP ends on January 1 in Louisiana, an estimated 1,000 government workers across the state would be left without employment, Heitman said. “But we remain hopeful a solution will be found,” she added.
If Louisiana eliminates SNAP, local groups would try, but wouldn’t be able to meet those needs, according to Melanie McGuire, chief impact officer at Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana. “SNAP provides twelve meals annually for every one meal that our food bank does,” she said. “That’s a big ratio.” Based in Harahan, Second Harvest is the state’s top food bank, feeding 210,000 people last year through hundreds of partners in 23 parishes.
“The myth is that people on food stamps should find employment,” McGuire said. “But in Louisiana, nearly 50 percent of SNAP benefits go to children and 20 percent to seniors. These aren’t working-age people.” Like Heitman, she noted that a number of Gulf residents who lost jobs after oil prices sank four years ago had turned to SNAP.
Among its advantages, SNAP helps families consume needed protein, McGuire said. The cost of living has risen in New Orleans since Katrina. Meat and fish are higher priced foods. While groceries aren’t taxed here, the city’s combined sales tax of 10 percent now, including five percent for the state, is among the nation’s highest and impacts households.
As for Second Harvest, churches, food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, community centers, schools and day camps rely on it to feed all ages. The group receives millions of pounds of donated food annually, much of which would have been wasted, from grocery companies, processors, farmers and restaurants. Chevron, Walmart, BP, Rouses Supermarkets and Entergy are among its corporate sponsors. Last year, Second Harvest supplied more than 34 million meals. That included 80 percent of all food served at the New Orleans Mission for the homeless.
A loss of SNAP would affect the region’s disaster response, McGuire said, echoing Heitman. “Without it, all sorts of Louisianans forced out of their homes and parishes wouldn’t be allowed to apply for federal DSNAP assistance,” McGuire said.
Even with SNAP and DSNAP in place, Second Harvest has rushed to meet needs created by hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and the 2010 Gulf spill. In the last two years, the group responded to five disasters, including the February 2017 tornado in New Orleans East. An affiliated ministry with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, Second Harvest is a member of Feeding America and United Way.
In Washington, President Trump and a number of Republicans support stricter work rules for SNAP. The program’s general requirements include registering for work, not quitting a job or voluntarily reducing work hours, taking a suitable job if one’s offered, and participating in a job and training program assigned by the state, according to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service last week. Certain people are exempt from these requirements if they’re employed or in school; because of their age; if they’re physically or mentally unfit; or they care for a young child or an ailing relative.
Able-bodied adults, who are 18 to 49 and without dependents, must work or participate in a job program at least 20 hours a week, or comply with a workfare program, to get SNAP for longer than three months in a 36-month span. That time limit doesn’t apply to those who are unfit for work, responsible for a child, pregnant, or exempt from SNAP’s general work requirements.
The Trump administration is considering letting states require drug testing for some food-stamp recipients. But at this time, “under federal law, states may not drug-test applicants for SNAP eligibility,” according to FNS, last week.
Congress is crafting a new Farm Bill. The Senate’s version supports the need for SNAP among families who are struggling, and it would continue to improve job training. That version contrasts with the House bill, which would end or cut benefits to over two million people. The 2014 Farm Bill expires on September 30.
Critics of food stamps demand a crackdown on illegal exchanges of SNAP benefits for cash, known as trafficking. According to a USDA-FNS study released last September, 1.5 percent of SNAP benefits redeemed nationally in 2012 to 2014 were trafficked at stores participating in the program, versus 1.34 percent in 2009-2011. In the report’s recent period, that amounted to about $1.1 billion in benefits being trafficked yearly. And in 2012 to 2014, nearly 12 percent of all SNAP-authorized retailers engaged in trafficking at least once. Convenience and small stores were the worst offenders.
Last week, Louisiana’s legislature examined sales tax proposals to fill a $507 million shortfall. Legislators focused on whether part of the state sales tax should be continued next month, when the tax is slated to decline from five percent to four percent. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards supports a 4.5 percent tax to cover the shortfall. A bill by Representative Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans and Ways and Means Chairman, would put the state’s new tax at 4.33 percent, and a bill by Representative Paula Davis, R-Baton Rouge, would set it at 4.4 percent.
Secretary Walters has given up predicting what the new sales tax rate will be. “I expected this to have been resolved in the spring,” she said.
This article originally published in the June 25, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
