More than 63,000 low-income Vermonters could see their federal food benefits disappear next month if the government shutdown lasts through October.
The Trump administration recently notified state officials that there won’t be enough money to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program if Congress doesn’t pass a continuing resolution by month’s end.
Though the Vermont Legislature passed a state budget in May that set aside about $100 million to offset potential federal funding losses, Secretary of Human Services Jenney Samuelson told lawmakers Thursday that the state might not be able to leverage those reserves.
“We have been exploring what it would look like to potentially backfill the program with state funds in the interim basis, but … it looks like the federal contingency plan may make that impossible,” she said.
Impossible, Samuelson said, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture told her agency Thursday that it might temporarily shut down the system that allows funds to be deposited on SNAP recipients’ electronic benefits cards.
EBT cards don’t function in retail settings, according to Samuelson, unless the federal government releases data to a national vendor on which the EBT payment system relies.
“They are not going to be releasing that data,” she told lawmakers. “And so if that happens, it could mean that the cards that our Vermont residents use are no longer functional beginning Nov. 1.”
Samuelson said her office is trying to get answers to key questions that will determine the state’s ability to intervene. But she said, "It’s very difficult to get clarification from the federal government.”
“We don’t know whether the benefit’s going to be turned off. We don’t know if the cards are going to work,” Samuelson said. “There may be options we can deploy, we just haven’t had enough time to explore what those are.”
“We don’t know whether the benefit’s going to be turned off. We don’t know if the cards are going to work. There may be options we can deploy, we just haven’t had enough time to explore what those are.”Vermont Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson
SNAP benefits aren’t the only strands of the social safety net in jeopardy as the federal shutdown entered its 16th day Thursday. Vermont has yet to receive the $22.5 million in federal funds that it was expecting for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Also unclear, according to state officials, is whether Vermont will get the $4 million it needs to maintain Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which funds Reach Up, among other programs.
“There’s a lot of unknown right now that we’re trying to navigate in partnership with you that is uncomfortable for everybody,” Administration Secretary Sarah Clark told members of the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee. “And my mantra is trying to get as comfortable as I can in the discomfort because that’s a constant right now.”
Also unknown, Clark said, is whether the Trump administration will reimburse Vermont for any state money it uses to maintain programs when federal funding lapses.
Lawmakers pressed Samuelson on Thursday to share contingency plans being prepared by the administration of Republican Gov. Phil Scott, in the event that food and fuel assistance is temporarily halted come November. Samuelson declined, saying the administration was still developing those plans.
Lawmakers, however, appear inclined to use state funding to backfill at least a portion of shutdown-related funding losses.
Washington County Sen. Andrew Perchlik, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he’s concerned about a “nightmare scenario” in which SNAP beneficiaries try to purchase groceries on Nov. 1 and realize for the first time that their benefits have been halted.
He said he’s equally concerned about lack of fuel benefits for low-income families that are banking on the arrival of assistance early next month to fill their heating fuel tanks before a hard freeze sets in.
“You could have people’s pipes freezing and then their house becomes unlivable and they’re homeless,” Perchlik said. “This is the kind of situation that we were anticipating when we set money aside, so we should be using that reserve money. I think we should do it now.”
The 10-person Joint Fiscal Committee doesn’t have the spending authority to allocate that money. But the Emergency Board, which consists of four lawmakers and the governor, does. Perchlik said he’d be reaching out to Emergency Board members Thursday evening in hopes of convening a meeting within the next two weeks.
“We know we need to have the Emergency Board meet, because the E-Board does have the authority to move some of that money,” he said.
