About 3.4 million Ohioans are poor enough to qualify for food bank assistance, but only 1.5 million Ohioans can get food stamp benefits. Visits to food banks in Ohio have gone up around ten percent in each of the last three years, according to the state’s 12 food banks and 3,600 hunger relief agencies. But Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposed budget gives them less money.
Food bank usage is up overall in Ohio – and specifically, by 58% among kids and 90% among older people. But the proposed budget cuts their funding by $15 million, because the increase they got in the last budget was considered one time funding.
“We’ve heard that this is a time when the state is looking at balancing a budget without some of the one time federal funding that they had access to for several years running,” said Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks. “What I’ve been told by Gov. DeWine and the team at Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is that the increase that we received in the ’24-’25 biennium of $7.5 million per year was considered from their point of view one-time funding.”
“The reality is, I would love to tell you that things are normal for people, but it doesn’t look anything like normal right now in our food pantry lines. And we can’t possibly go back to the levels that are that reduced right now and keep up an adequate response to need,” Novotny added.
Around 3.4 million Ohioans qualify for assistance at food banks. Novotny said they’re asking for that money to be restored to help with the current need. About 1.5 million Ohioans qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.
“Not only are we serving another 1.9 million or so Ohioans potentially that aren’t poor enough to qualify for SNAP, but we’re also trying to help fill gaps in those SNAP benefits are inadequate,” Novotny said. “Obviously SNAP benefits haven’t gone up as quickly as the cost of food has gone up as quickly as rent has gone up, and so folks don’t have as much purchasing power with those dollars.”
Novotny said she’s concerned about the federal budget approved by Congressional Republicans to cut SNAP benefits by $230 billion, but also about a proposed federal ban on food stamp recipients using their electronic benefit transfer cards to buy junk food, because it could cause issues for individual stores in food deserts.
“If my retailer now has this extra level of bureaucracy that they have to implement where they have to somehow what label all of the food that’s inventoried in their system, and then their cashiers have to be trained on what can and can’t be purchased with their SNAP dollars, that retailer might just say, hey, I’m not going to accept EBT anymore,” Novotny said. “Then we’re in a situation where we’ve actually worsened access to healthy foods. I really think it’s about focusing on benefit adequacy and on improving access to outlets for healthy food.”
Hearings continue on the two-year state budget in the House, which is expected to pass it by the Easter break in late April.
This article was originally published by a www.statenews.org . Read the Original article here. .