Dems pursue more SNAP waivers for food help

By Marc Kovac | October 14, 2015 at 12:02a.m.

COLUMBUS

Democratic state lawmakers continue to call on Republican Gov. John Kasich to seek federal waivers from work requirements for food assistance for needy residents in struggling Ohio counties and cities.

Rep. Dan Ramos, D-Lorain, announced the latest legislation Tuesday on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a federal program that provides food for residents earning 130 percent of the federal poverty level or less.

“No person in this land of opportunity should go wanting of this most basic of needs,” Ramos said during a press conference at the Statehouse. “Every advanced society, every philosophy, every major religion espouses the virtue of feeding the hungry, yet today in Ohio, we find ourselves picking and choosing who gets assistance.”

More than 1.6 million Ohioans were receiving SNAP benefits as of this past June, according to Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which administers the program. The average monthly benefit was nearly $130.

Under federal welfare reform enacted in the 1990s, able-bodied adults without dependents are required to find a job, attend career training or complete other tasks at least 20 hours a week in order to receive SNAP benefits for more than three months over any given three-year period.

The work requirement does not apply to pregnant women, those with dependent children, children or the elderly or disabled residents.

The work requirements were waived during the so-called “Great Recession,” when unemployment rates in Ohio were in excess of 10 percent. The requirements were restarted as unemployment rates dropped in recent years, except in counties where the average unemployment rate over the past two years is at least 20 percent higher than the national average, Johnson said.

At the moment, the waiver covers eligible adults in Adams, Ashtabula, Brown, Clinton, Coshocton, Gallia, Highland, Huron, Jackson, Jefferson, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Noble, Ottawa, Perry, Pike and Scioto counties.

The Kasich administration has held firm on the waiver decision, however.

Last week, Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, wrote a letter to the governor, asking him to reconsider a waiver for Youngstown, noting the city “has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the state.”

“As our state continues to recover from the economic turmoil of the Great Recession, working families in the Mahoning Valley deserve to have every resource available in order to keep them from going hungry,” she wrote.