Photo IDs for SNAP Shoppers?

SNAP beneficiaries will be carrying photo ID EBT cards if a bill introduced last week in the Senate ever sees the light of day.

The bill, introduced by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), would require the issuance of photo IDs to all participants in the SNAP program.

In a press release, Vitter stated that the bill’s goal is “to restore some accountability to the program so it’s not ruined for people who use it appropriately.”

According to a press release issued by Vitter’s office, a system outage last fall that led some beneficiaries to purchase huge quantities of merchandise in dollar amounts clearly beyond their SNAP spending limits was a motivating factor for the bill. Reports at the time included some people simply walking out of stores with full carts during the confusion.

“My bill will restore some accountability to the program so it's not ruined for people who use it appropriately,” stated Vitter in the release.

A requirement to provide photo ID would verify that a person is the legal beneficiary of the EBT card, according to the bill.

Anyone caught attempting to illegally use another recipient's EBT card would be banned from the program.

Vitter recently announced his candidacy for Louisiana governor in 2015.

Federal Register Posting on Replacement EBT Cards

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is amending the rules for the SNAP program, sometimes known as food stamps, to give states more power over handing out replacement benefit cards.

The new rules let states deny “excessive” requests to replace an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, which authorizes the EBT cardholder to purchase a specific dollar value of food and authorizes him or her to do so. 

The new rules will officially be published on Nov. 1 2013

The purpose of the new regulations is to enable state agencies, which issue the cards, to crack down on fraud, according to USDA.  The department says that the rule will not apply to elderly and homeless people who may often lose their cards. 

To view the new rules, available to the public on Nov. 1 click here.

Farmers Markets

A bill introduced earlier this year in the Florida legislature would have gone a long way towards putting some muscle behind the drive to expand SNAP EBT to farmers markets in the Sunshine State. Senate Bill 778, titled "Transactions in Fresh Produce Markets," would have required farmers market operators and managers to let third party organizations operate EBT systems in those markets. The bill apparently died in committee and is off the calendar. 

No word on whether the bill's sponsor, Sen. Geri Thompson (D-Orange County), will reintroduce.

Some Hard Data on Farmers Markets

Whether you work with government-sponsored nutrition programs like the Snap program or not, you’ve probably heard the buzz by now about farmers markets. Every spring they sprout up in vacant lots in urban areas, in Yuppie neighborhoods, or in church parking lots anywhere in America. We know where they are and what they are. What we don’t know are the business issues underlying them.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Research andAnalysis has shed some more light on the inner workings of these markets with a new study, “Nutrition Assistance at Farmers Markets: Understanding Current Operations.” It provides a look into how these markets operate and what makes them sustainable.

The data for the study were gathered from a national survey of nearly 1,700 markets and 600 farmers who market directly to the public.  The survey results covered into four areas:

1.       Operations

2.       Funding

3.       Products

4.       Snap participation

Operations

The study showed a gradual evolution in market operations. For example, markets that were authorized by USDA for Snap EBT and were actively accepting that form of tender were more organized and tended to have more rules regarding market participation.

These markets also tended to partner with some other types of organization. They also required the vendors to report the value of their sales, and had operating expense greater than $25,000.

Direct sellers who actively sold to Snap program participants were likely to be long-time, full-time farmers.  Nearly two-thirds of them also sold in farmers markets. And, if a farmer was currently Snap-authorized and redeeming, he was more likely to have annual farm revenue above $100,000. That farmer was also likely to see more than 25 percent of his total revenue come from direct food sales.

Funding

Despite the focus on food, both markets and direct-from-the-farm sellers rely on other sources of income, according to the survey. Over four-fifths of farmers markets rely on vendor fees. Roughly 40 percent of farmers markets and 30 percent of direct sellers got outside financial or in some cases non-financial aid. Sources of this aid included non-federal government agencies, non-profit agencies or private businesses.

The Cooperative Extension Service was the largest provider of aid to direct-marketing farmers.

Products

Both farmers markets and direct-from-the-farm sellers sold more fruits and vegetables than any other product. However, direct-selling farmers were less likely than markets to feature other products, according to the survey.

Snap Participation and Barriers to Participation

When an entire markets not authorized to accept Snap benefits it is still likely that some of the vendors in the market are Snap-approved. The converse is also true, according the survey. When the market is Snap-authorized, there may be some vendors within the market that do not participate in the program, according to the study.

Lack of infrastructure was the factor most cited by non-participating sellers and the reason for not participating in the Snap program.  Infrastructure could include a “card-accepting device,” that allows the seller to “read” the card data, or telecommunications connections that allow the seller to transmit the electronic card data for authorization.

Issues

The USDA survey is a valuable tool for understanding the business and operational issues of farmers markets. But questions remain, such as: Exactly how viable a business is farmers market? Is it sustainable for the long run? Could it survive without the subsidies and grants that 40 percent of markets and 30 percent of direct marketing farmers receive, according to the data?

And if the answer to the survivability question is no, then rather than looking market business models, we should examine whether there is a compelling public interest that underlies farmers markets. If the answer to that question is yes, then perhaps markets should be treated as another nutrition channel, similar to the School Lunch program or WIC, and federally supported as such.

But there is even a problem with that. According to the survey, just the process alone of becoming Snap-authorized may be problematic for sellers and markets. This includes the application process, the necessary end-of-day accounting, the potential need to hire staff to deal with the paperwork and the cost of equipment.  When direct marketing farmers who redeem the most benefits only see a quarter of their sales from the government program, there’s not a big incentive for other farmers to join in.

“Nutritional Assistance of Farmers Markets” is a good piece of research. But we still have a long way to go before we figure out whether farmers markets will be a viable piece to solving our nation’s nutritional puzzle, or a Saturday morning curiosity for the Starbucks crowd. 

Suspension of SNAP Benefit Payments to Retailers

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service today unveiled a proposed rule that would allow it to hold back the payments to food stores that face disqualification from the SNAP, formerly food stamp, program because of alleged fraudulent activity like trafficking in SNAP benefits.

Interested parties have until April 23 to comment on the proposed action by FNS. The agency is interested in receiving comment from states and EBT processors on the impact this change may have on states and the companies that process EBT transactions for them, according to the notice of public comment.

In addition to other information, FNS is looking for comment regarding any system changes, the costs of those changes and the timetable for completing them.

Anyone interested in commenting on the proposed rule can access the notice in the Federal Register.

The proposed rule is the latest in a string of actions by FNS to target and eliminate fraud in the SNAP program.

Uncomfortable in Someone Else's Skin

I received an email yesterday with a press release about a company called "Food Stamp Covers." The company is hawking an eponymous product called food stamp covers. Food stamp covers are thin "skins" designed to be applied over the obverse (front) side of your SNAP, or food stamp, card. They come, as they say in a wide assortment of colors and styles and prevent your card from looking like the food stamp card issued by the state in which you are shopping.

I'm all for American ingenuity. If there's money to be made, we're all over it. But something about this strikes me the wrong way. The business case for this product seems to be that you have 47 million people participating in program but they're ashamed enough about it that they don't want anyone to know? There are also technical and regulatory questions this product raises. For example, the requirements of the physical card are pretty closely defined in federal regulations. Does this violate these regulations?

Again, I applaud the creativity. But does it point to a deeper, more fundamental problem with entitlement programs like these? 

F.A.S.T. Proving Anything But

The implementation of a new social services eligibility system in North Carolina dubbed F.A.S.T. has slowed the delivery of SNAP benefits for the program formerly known as food stamps.

State workers in Cumberland County have complained that they would spend hours working on a case, only to have the recipient call the next day to say that the SNAP EBT card issued by the system would not work in a grocery store.

Other workers have said that when technicians fix one glitch it causes another one to occur.

The state plans to extend the new system to the Medicaid program.

It's the Party Pooper: USDA to Blast Fraudsters with a New Cache of Weapons

Reiterating his Department's "zero tolerance" policy towards fraud in the SNAP, program, formerly called food stamps, Under Secretary of Agriculture Kevin Concannon on Thursday announced a number of steps USDA is taking to crack down on benefit diversion and misuse.

The biggest change is that the Department is moving away from an "either/or" punishment for retailers who traffic SNAP benefits. Currently, retailers found to have trafficked in benefits face disqualification from the program or a financial penalty, but not both.

The Food & Nutrition Service within
USDA is the agency that oversees
and monitors the SNAP program,
formerly known as Food Stamps

The proposed new sanctions allow USDA to permanently disqualify a guilty grocer, plus hit him with a hefty fine on the way out the door.

In a release, Concannon stated that "These additional measures reaffirm our ongoing commitment to ensuring these dollars are spent as intended-helping millions of people in need get back on solid economic footing."

The new regulations would require states to take "specific actions" to nail fraudsters on the front end and to make sure ineligible applicants don't get certified to receive SNAP benefits.

USDA has been doubling down on fraud detection and control in the wake of increased oversight by the Administration and Congress. Recently the Department has:

• Sent letters to popular social media sites seeking to prevent Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook and Twitter from becoming an online flea market for buying and selling SNAP benefits
• Proposed regulations that would give states the option of making a recipient contact the state agency for a new card when there have been an excessive number of new card requests on an account
• Proposed tougher rules for so-called high-risk stores trying to get approval to redeem SNAP benefits
• Worked more closely with state and other federal agencies spreading the word about program violators

USDA has also launched a "Stop SNAP Fraud" web page to provide information on reducing fraud in the program. The site includes Frequently Asked Questions about fraud, details the Department's efforts to fight fraud, and includes instructions on reporting and fighting fraud. 

Breaking: Senate Walks Back Effort to Block Grant SNAP

By a nearly 2-1 margin the Senate today tabled an amendment by Sen. Rand Paul (R, KY) to block grant the SNAP, formerly Food Stamp, program.

The vote was 65-33 with two abstentions.

Walmart Planning EBT Meeting

Walmart is planning what it calls a "summit" for the WIC and SNAP programs to take place this summer. The date of the event is July 30 at the retailer's corporate office in Bentonville, AR.

Conference organizers for Walmart have distributed notices about the event. Distribution was limited to state WIC and SNAP directors, according to sources. Including in the notice is a  link to an online survey. The purpose of the online survey is to solicit programming ideas from the invitees.

The question arises whether programming and program participation is open to all EBT professionals or if this is intended solely for state and federal EBT staff and is a way for Walmart to get state program managers in a room for eight hours without having to share their attention with financial institutions, processors, manufacturers, consultants and other critical thought leaders in the EBT community.