The Colorado legislature’s Joint Budget Committee on Thursday unanimously approved spending $10 million from the state’s reserves to shore up food banks and food assistance programs while SNAP benefits are suspended due to the government shutdown.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
But nonpartisan staff emphasized to lawmakers that Colorado does not have the financial resources to cover people’s lost benefits.
“It is effectively us trying to plow a field with a fork. The scale of this particular emergency vastly outstrips any ability for the state to mitigate it in any truly meaningful way,” said Tom Dermody, the JBC’s chief legislative budget and policy analyst.
Dermody presented the $10 million proposal from the governor’s office to the budget committee and said it falls far short of making up for the $120 million per month the state currently receives in federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, money that is distributed to 600,000 Coloradans to help pay for groceries.
“It’s the best that the state has. We don’t have the mechanism to actually step in and provide that funding,” he said.
Because food banks can buy food at a discount of 20 to 30 cents on the dollar, compared to retail prices, the state estimates its $10 million could be leveraged to bring in about $50 million worth of food for households.
The state funding will be doled out in several grants to the nonprofit Feeding Colorado, which will, in turn, distribute the money to food banks with the greatest needs around the state.
“The south and southeast part of Colorado has proportionally more SNAP recipients in terms of their population than anywhere else in Colorado,” said Dermody, describing where some of the funds will go. “So my understanding is that there will be a focus to send assistance, whether financial or actual food products, to those communities.”
But the two Republicans on the JBC, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart, expressed frustration that the money won’t be going to every part of Colorado.
“It’s not a statewide solution,” said Kirkmeyer from Weld County. “We have no guarantee where it’s getting to. We know it’s not even close to the amount of dollars that are needed to provide the food that will be needed for food security.”
Nonpartisan staff agreed that it’s not statewide, and said the solution was “riddled with holes.” Colorado is among about two dozen states suing the Trump Administration, demanding it tap into a congressionally-approved emergency reserve fund to keep SNAP benefits going as the shutdown continues.
When it comes to the state funding, Kirkmeyer blasted the governor for dipping into reserves when she said the state should instead use money from its own disaster emergency fund.
“This is an emergency in this state regardless of why it’s caused, whether it’s man-made or natural made,” she said. “This is an emergency in this state, where we have 600,000 people who are not going to have food security. And we’ve got people back at the federal level, blame it on whoever you want, it’s happening.”
Colorado’s nonpartisan budget director and Democrats on the committee noted that even if the state used emergency funds, Colorado would still need to pay that back with general budget funds next year, something Kirkmeyer disputed.
Taggart, who is from Grand Junction, said he understood the challenge that the state was dipping into its limited reserves.
“But I also realize this is food, and I’m scared to death because I’m from one of those regions that relies on this,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Emily Sirota of Denver, who also sits on the JBC, called the suspension of SNAP benefits a federally induced “disaster” and said she wondered how Gov. Jared Polis came up with the $10 million figure.
“What I hear is this is the best that we feel we can put forward from the state at this time,” she said, noting there is a lot of pain the state has to plan for ahead — like spiking health care costs — all while contending with its own budget shortfall.
Other Democrats on the committee also lamented the troubles caused by the government shutdown. Congress has been at an impasse since September, with Democrats demanding that the next round of government funding extend expiring health insurance subsidies, while Republicans say the two issues must be considered separately.
“This shutdown could last for months, and then we are having looming disaster after disaster,” said Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who sits on the JBC. “People are going to start to have to choose between eating and paying their rent, between paying their rent and paying their utilities. And we are going to see a massive amount of suffering.”
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.