A woman shops at the Feeding South Florida pantry in Pembroke Park, Florida this month. Food banks across the country are preparing for massive demand due to a disruption in federal food assistance due to the government shutdown. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
There’s no way his local government can fill the void left by a glitch in the federal food stamp program, but local official Gregg Wright says his Minnesota county needs to do something.
“This is pretty much a crisis for families,” said Wright, a member of the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners.
Last week, the board voted unanimously to transfer up to $200,000 to a local food bank to facilitate neighbors at risk of losing food assistance due to the federal government shutdown.
Olmsted County, which has about 165,000 residents and is home to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, expects to lose about $1.7 million per month in benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP. It’s a dilemma facing leaders across the country as they prepare for an unprecedented pause in the nation’s largest food aid program as the shutdown drags on.
While attorneys general and governors from 25 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration On Tuesday, the administration said it would not release funds until Congress’s budget crisis is resolved to force it to pay SNAP benefits next month.
That leaves food banks, pantries and local governments having to prepare for an onslaught of demand. States declare emergencies, deploy National Guard members and transfer millions of taxpayer dollars to local food banks. Nonprofits must prepare for long lines, empty shelves and even panic or civil unrest as about 42 million Americans are expected to lose access to the safety net program within days.
“The magnitude of this problem is hard to comprehend,” said Wright, who noted that his county is just one of more than 3,000 nationwide.
The local food bank estimated it could feed SNAP families for a month by spending about $400,000 on bulk food purchases. Instead of paying the entire amount, the county board asked community members to facilitate raise an additional $200,000.
Wright said the county won’t be able to fund food assistance for long.
“We can’t continue to do this without raising taxes because it’s not in our budget,” he said. “…Who could plan this? Who would expect this to come from the federal government?”
Minnesota is among 10 states where counties, rather than state governments, administer the food stamp program. Across the country, state and county governments have redirected local resources to try to close the closure gap.
California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has repealed 80 million dollars in government funding and deployed National Guard members to support food banks.
Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin declared the state Emergencythat the Commonwealth would exploit its own funds to provide ephemeral assistance to SNAP recipients.
In LouisianaState leaders are preparing to exploit $150 million a month to continue SNAP aid Nevada plans to direct $38.8 million to local food banks.
Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz announced the state would reroute 4 million dollars to grocery shelves across the state.
“This is supposed to be a bridge,” Walz said during a press conference Monday. “It’s not going to make up for and replenish everything.”
Food banks across the country are already facing increased demand.
Who could plan that? Who would have expected this to come from the federal government?
– Gregg Wright, Olmsted County, Minn., commissioner
Virginia Witherspoon, executive director of the Channel One Regional Food Bank in Rochester, Minn., said last week that the phone “kept ringing.” The nonprofit distributes food to partners in 14 counties and operates its own food shelf in Rochester. That pantry averaged about 450 families per day last month, but last week it already averaged 550 per day, Witherspoon said.
“I don’t blame anyone for rushing to their local food shelf and stocking up because they’re afraid they won’t be able to feed their families,” she told Stateline. “What I would say is that the grocery shelves in Minnesota – we’re here, we’re open, we want to serve you. We’re doing the best we can.”
But Channel One and other operators are concerned about the possibility of panic among families looking for food.
Witherspoon told the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners that her organization has considered calling for a police presence but wants to be careful about what kind of message it sends to the public. She said even increasing food distribution from once to twice a week could cause people to rush into the area.
She said it reminded her of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she appeared on local television to tell people not to worry, even though she was secretly worried they might run out of food.
“It’s tough. On the one hand, I’m sounding the alarm publicly to you, to our donors, to our government,” she told the commissioners. “On the other hand, we don’t want to panic the public and have everyone go shopping at once. That’s really not a good situation and we’ve never been here before.”
Debate about federal funding
The predicament facing nonprofits and local governments is unprecedented: food stamps have not been impacted during other government shutdowns. And even the Trump administration has previously pledged that it would draw on a multi-year emergency fund to continue paying SNAP benefits.
The administration turned around That was their position on Friday when the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would not release funds in November and warned states that they would not receive reimbursement for spending their own revenue on the food program.
SNAP has about $6 billion in its emergency fund — less than the roughly $9 billion needed to cover a full month of the program.
It’s unclear what the administration’s position means for states that have already begun setting aside their own dollars.
Following Virginia Emergency declarationThe newly created Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance program is expected to start sending money to SNAP beneficiaries on November 3rd.
The governor estimates about $37.5 million per week will be allocated to Virginia 850,000 SNAP recipient, the Virginia Mercury reported.
Neither the governor’s office nor the Virginia Department of Social Services responded to Stateline’s requests for comment.
North Dakota officials said they had enough cash on hand to cover SNAP benefits in November but were unable to load the money onto people’s electronic payment cards, according to the North Dakota Monitor reported.
State and federal lawmakers, advocates and attorneys general across the country have been pushing the administration to release SNAP funds in November.
Last week, the CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures requested the USDA produce it clear instructions on the ability of states to spend and be reimbursed for ongoing administrative costs.
North Carolina’s Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson, one of the officials who sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, said 1.4 million people – including nearly 600,000 children – would lose SNAP assistance in his state.
“They have emergency money to feed the children during this shutdown and they refuse to spend it.”
Emergency plans
In New Hampshire, Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte announced a statehood “emergency plan” to facilitate SNAP recipients. Pending approval from other state leaders, the plan calls for redirecting $2 million to the New Hampshire Food Bank to open up to 20 sites for SNAP recipients twice a week over the next five weeks.
Officials in Ayotte’s office and the state health department did not respond to Stateline’s requests for comment.
Elsy Cipriani, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank, said the organization is still working on details with the state. She said the group would likely ask to see people’s electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards — the debit cards that people exploit to access SNAP benefits at grocery stores — to ensure that government-purchased food goes to SNAP recipients.
“While we don’t intend to replace SNAP benefits — because we can’t and there’s no way to replace that — we hope to provide some relief,” she told Stateline.
In Minnesota, county managers in some areas are working overtime to answer questions from SNAP recipients and facilitate find other food assistance.
This additional workload comes without state or federal reimbursement, said Tina Schenk, director of health and human services for rural Meeker County.
“This is just to respond to our community because that’s our job,” she said. “But this is completely different work than we normally do.”
Meeker County, home to about 23,000 people, isn’t immense enough to cover SNAP benefits for even a month, Schenk said. So county staff are instead working with local nonprofits and reaching out to families who will be most affected by a benefit interruption to connect them with other state support programs.
The only local food shelf is increasing its orders from a central food bank, Schenk said — but so are nearly every other operation in the state.
“Will they have enough to fulfill these orders? That’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by State borderwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes West Virginia Watch, and is a 501c(3) public charity supported by grants and a coalition of donors.
