Why is Gov. Laura Kelly putting Kansans’ SNAP benefits at risk? | Opinion
The old adage, “The cover-up is worse than the crime,” is commonly associated with the Watergate scandal and the eventual downfall of President Richard Nixon. Old sayings stick because there’s truth behind them. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and Department for Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard are in the process of proving why this old adage has staying power. Their cover-up involves SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and it could have dire results for the truly needy Kansans who rely on it.
In March of this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on “stopping waste, fraud, and abuse” that required all federal agency heads to “take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding.” Later, in May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would request SNAP data from the states to “identify and rectify any ineligible, duplicate, or fraudulent SNAP enrollments or transactions.” The USDA sought information “verifying eligibility based on immigration status, identifying and eliminating duplicate enrollments, assisting states in mitigating identity theft, and performing other eligibility and program integrity checks using lawfully shared internal and interagency data.”
The information the USDA is seeking is straightforward. It’s simply the qualifying information DCF must use to determine eligibility for SNAP: names, birthdays, Social Security numbers, home addresses and “all data records used to determine eligibility,” including income information for those currently receiving food stamps. The USDA also requested information from all individuals who have applied for SNAP benefits after Jan. 1, 2020. This logical request stems from the massive jump in program usage during the pandemic.
The Kansas SNAP program provides approximately $417 million in benefits and feeds about 188,000 people a month, including around 86,000 children. Shockingly, Kelly is putting all that at risk by refusing to honor the USDA’s basic data request. In a recent public meeting of the Legislative Coordinating Council, I asked Attorney General Kris Kobach if the governor has the right to withhold this information from the USDA and if she can be compelled to release it. His answer raises grave concerns: “We have a team of attorneys investigating that exact question.”
Kobach added that the federal government has the authority to withhold funding. “She is putting at risk the receipt in Kansas of those monies. … That is a very substantial amount of money.”
By refusing to fulfill this simple data request from the USDA, Kelly and Howard are jeopardizing millions of dollars in funding to our state and risking the loss of food stamps to many Kansans who truly need food assistance.
USDA deadlines loom
If you think this is hyperbole, I direct your attention to a letter from former Kansas state Rep. Patrick Penn, who now oversees SNAP within the USDA. The letter states the Kelly administration is out of compliance and highlights several deadlines by which they must submit the requested data before federal funding could be suspended. The letter also quite plainly lays out the USDA’s legal authority to request this data.
The most troubling aspect of the Kelly administration’s refusal to comply with the USDA’s request is that it doesn’t make logical sense. Howard claims they are “protecting private and personal information.” Protecting this information from whom exactly? SNAP is administered at the state level, but funding comes from the USDA at the federal level. Of course the USDA has the legal authority to ensure the program is being administered properly and verify that benefits are not given to those not eligible, such as people in the country illegally and those with incomes exceeding the threshold.
Making matters worse, improper administration of SNAP seems to be a pattern for Kelly’s DCF. In fact, it’s been mismanaged by the agency for so long that both the Biden and Trump administrations sent the department warning letters to fix its high error rate or risk funding loss. Like the request for eligibility data, these letters were seemingly ignored. Earlier this year, the Kansas SNAP program was operating with a 12% payment error rate, the highest in the region. It has since gone down only slightly to around 10%, yet rates are still 4% higher than required to avoid additional costs for Kansas taxpayers. Kelly’s DCF has failed to fix its error rates and is dodging accountability with the USDA, putting the entire program at risk. But why?
What are Kelly and Howard so inclined to cover up that they are willing to risk federal funding for SNAP? Will frail and elderly Kansans now go without so Democratic Governors Association Chair Kelly can claim a win for the resistance against the Trump administration? Will poverty-stricken children not have food because the governor wants to protect services for those who are in the country illegally?
There are many questions that need to be answered. Verifying that those who receive food assistance are eligible isn’t an invasion of privacy or a legal risk. It’s simply shoring up the program to ensure it’s there for those who truly need it. Returning to Watergate, Nixon famously declared, “I’m not a crook.” Only months later, he would resign from office and forever change the way the public views the government. Gov. Kelly and Secretary Howard owe it to the people of Kansas to end the SNAP cover-up, provide the requested eligibility data to the USDA and help ensure the SNAP program endures for those who truly need it. Failing to do so not only imperils SNAP funding but also further erodes the trust of the taxpayers.
Dan Hawkins is speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives.