The SNAP-Ed program — which focuses on nutrition education and overall wellness for people on food stamps — will end Sept. 30, cutting off hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual grants that supported programming across all Vermont counties, including recipe demonstrations, meal kits and active-living guides.

The program’s elimination was part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget adjustments that passed on July 4 in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As the state’s food assistance network finds its way through a new landscape of shortfalls, officials worry more residents will fall through the cracks.

SNAP-Ed is an extension of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has experienced a number of cuts across the board. Instead of providing funds for individuals to purchase food, SNAP-Ed’s much smaller grants focus on community education and initiatives to improve eligible households’ engagement with 3SquaresVT — Vermont’s name for the larger body of resources under SNAP. 

“Just providing food for people is not the whole answer to food security,” said Suzanne Kelly, who was the SNAP-Ed coordinator at the Vermont Department of Health for a decade until last month. Her former position, and another related role, will soon be discontinued.

“SNAP-Ed is sort of that extra bit of information to really make sure that people can access the food, can use the food, and can enjoy it over time,” Kelly said.

The program is deeply focused on health outcomes, she said, including prevention of chronic conditions and disease, and promoting wellness through nutrition and exercise.

Kelly is concerned about the immediate impact on Vermonters. 

“These are decisions that trickle down to the most vulnerable people in our communities,” she said.

Kelly referenced a SNAP-Ed needs assessment earlier this year that identified certain populations in the state with a disproportionately high need for food assistance, including rural Vermonters and people with disabilities. Outreach programs that meet people where they are geographically will be an especially big loss, Kelly said.

The end of SNAP-Ed has already had tangible effects in recent weeks, causing the imminent shutdown of a food pantry in Holland and contributing to the Vermont Foodbank’s recent staff cuts. Of the seven employees the food bank let go, three were specifically operating SNAP-Ed programs, according to Chris Meehan, the company’s chief impact officer.

Vermont residents received over $147 million in SNAP aid last year. The projected allocation for Vermont’s SNAP-Ed budget in 2026, which the Department of Health received May 30, was less than half a million. Five weeks later, Kelly learned that the program was canceled.

‘We’ll have to be really creative’

Meehan said the SNAP-Ed cuts will effectively end the Vermont Foodbank’s VTFresh program, which has reached every county in the state with initiatives to increase access and understanding around nutrition. The program provided a space for people to exchange knowledge about cooking, recipes and budgeting, and was often particularly useful for families, she said.

While the food bank employees who ran the initiative are no longer with the organization, the program’s existing resources will remain on the Vermont Foodbank website. VTFresh’s continuing presence, Meehan said, will be “more passive than active.”

Meehan is grateful for the infrastructure that VTFresh has left behind — it has been “transformational” for the food assistance network in the state, she said. 

Denise Walton, a Concord resident who is a lead volunteer at Sid’s Pantry in town, said VTFresh recipe materials had been invaluable in allowing her community to make better use of fresh foods. It’s common, she said, for people to ask questions about how to prepare food as they’re taking it.

“I think people want to cook,” said Walton, who herself is on food stamps. “They may not have learned, or been taught, or had the time.”

Walton said she would keep trying to provide resources to help people fully use the food they’re receiving — but that it will be more challenging going forward. 

“We’ll have to be really creative,” Walton said.

Vermont Foodbank’s situation is par for the course statewide at smaller food assistance providers.

The Vermont Garden Network will lose its dedicated nutrition educator, according to executive director T Hanson, one of only five staff at the organization. Come Alive Outside, a nonprofit which used SNAP-Ed funds to reach thousands of school-age kids in Rutland County with tips on how to stay active, has told its staff it may not have sufficient funds to pay everyone in six months, according to Executive Director Arwen Turner. 

Meanwhile, in Burlington, the People’s Farmstand will continue as a purely volunteer effort, according to founding Director Nour El-Naboulsi. There hadn’t been salaried roles, he clarified, but they had previously been able to offer staff — primarily farmers — a stipend for their time. The organization offers free fresh produce (both self-grown and donated) at weekly open events but has also been conducting educational outreach through its Veggie of the Month program. 

El-Naboulsi said the initiative features a combination of staple Vermont crops and “culturally relevant produce — things from Nepal, Somalia, Iraq (and) other places in the Middle East and East Africa.” The organization serves a relatively large proportion of immigrant and refugee populations, he said, and the program is designed to combine familiar food with information about how to prepare local produce.

With the loss of SNAP-Ed funding to the People’s Farmstand and sister organization Village Hydroponics, El-Naboulsi said he has had to reprioritize.

“We kind of lose the capacity to do supplementary education, recipe preparation, outreach,” he said.

‘A great return on investment’

Keith Robinson, a pediatric pulmonologist at UVM Children’s Hospital, emphasized a connection between SNAP-Ed and health outcomes for families. He’s the hospital’s vice chair for Quality Improvement and Population Health and built the provider’s screening platform for food insecurity.

“We are trying to go deeper and further upstream to make sure that we’re solving the root causes of food insecurity in Vermont,” Robinson said.

For him, nutrition education has been a big part of that work — that’s why the end of SNAP-Ed is such a blow, despite the small scale of previous funding.

“It’s gonna make communities potentially less healthy, and it’s also gonna create gaps in the systems that we need to have around families,” he said. “While the dollar value may not be great, the impact of those dollars is extraordinary.”

Robinson referenced a state report on SNAP-Ed last year, calling survey data that indicated diet and exercise changes for participants “a big deal.” Roughly a third of people who received direct nutrition education reported they ate more fruits and vegetables each day, and 20% said they exercised more, according to the report.

“That’s a great return on investment,” Robinson said.

Modifications and cuts to the SNAP program at large have been made in the name of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” — a narrative that Kelly disputed. 

“The strategies that are used (in SNAP-Ed) have shown outcomes — real outcomes,” she said.

A page addressing cost concerns on the USDA website references studies showing that for every dollar spent on SNAP-Ed and similar programs, 10 times that can be saved in future health care costs. The total nationwide cost of the program would have been $550 million in the 2026 fiscal year.

“It’s probably not the best idea to be cutting programs that are going to eventually help reduce costs way further down the line,” Kelly said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment.

A document briefly detailing SNAP overhaul from the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture called SNAP-Ed a program that has wrought “no meaningful change” for its target population. The committee cited a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office that appears to primarily conclude that the effectiveness of the program is difficult to properly evaluate due to uneven standards of reporting from state agencies and a lack of coordination at the federal level. 

“When federal benefits get cut like this, we need to think about how to bolster connections in our community, and think differently about how to fill those gaps,” Robinson said. 

Jeanne Montross, executive director of Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects, or HOPE, in Middlebury, said her organization has been seeing the effects of staff and program cuts elsewhere in the state’s assistance networks. Montross’ nonprofit is primarily funded by private contributions.

“It always ends up flowing down to HOPE,” she said of increased need in her local community.

Anore Horton, executive director at Hunger Free Vermont, said the state’s food assistance network “cannot in any way mitigate the loss of all of these different sources of funding.”

Any solution to a problem of this scale must be “collective,” Horton said, but must also involve significant new assistance from the state government. But in a situation this urgent, Horton said it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for the state to replace nutrition education funding.

Walton said Sid’s Pantry has also been increasingly relying on community support and donations.

“We’re very fortunate to have a little buffering like that,” she said, “especially for an aging community that needs healthy food and needs access to things out in the rural areas.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Loss of SNAP-Ed program leaves gaps in Vermont’s food assistance network.

The Holland Food Shelf announced Tuesday it would close its doors the last week of September, citing the loss of federal nutrition assistance funds and high rent costs as major factors in the decision. 

“We can’t do it without funding,” said Don Stevens, executive director of the pantry’s nonprofit operator, Abenaki Helping Abenaki, and chief of the Nulhegan band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation. “It’s not just us, right?” he added, referencing Vermont Foodbank’s recent cuts in addition to other struggles in the state’s food assistance network.

The food pantry has served residents in and around Holland, a town sitting on the Northeast Kingdom’s border with Canada, since 2021. This year, Stevens said, demand had reached a peak, with the pantry sometimes serving nearly 700 people per month. Now, as the organization winds down, residents and advocates are concerned its absence will leave a vulnerable and rural part of the state without enough support.

Stevens said he hopes the month of continued service will allow participants time to transition to other providers. His organization had started the food pantry to “help as many as we can,” he said. His team also has been purchasing food from local farmers and participating in gleaning efforts in the NEK.

The organization had lost several other federal income streams in the past, Stevens said, but the most recent decisive setback was the loss of $25,000 in SNAP-Ed, or Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program Education, grants starting next year. The money would have gone to food purchases, outreach, training and wages, but was eliminated with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4.

“(SNAP-Ed) has helped low-income Vermonters develop skills and understanding about how to access, use, and prepare nutritious food, and helped families eat healthy meals on a budget,” Kyle Casteel, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health, wrote in a statement Thursday. 

“The funding loss is impacting important projects and initiatives that are carried out by valued partners across the state,” the statement continued.

The two paid employees of the pantry will be laid off, Stevens said. 

“We had no choice,” he said.

Abenaki Helping Abenaki is a nonprofit with the primary mission of providing programs and services for the Nulhegan band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation and “other native people,” Stevens said. That work will continue.

“We are still feeding our tribal community,” Stevens said, though the public food pantry will close.

The Holland Food Shelf has worked with Vermont Foodbank, which had recently been providing the organization with roughly 10,000 pounds of food per quarter, according to the food bank’s government and public affairs manager, Carrie Stahler. Before the end of pandemic-era nutrition assistance programs that lowered the cost of food for local providers, she said, the food bank had provided even more. 

The northern portions of Orleans and Essex counties are areas of the state that have proven especially challenging for Stahler’s organization to reach, she said, due to the distance involved in delivery and a relative scarcity of local organizations to partner with.

“One of the issues that we as a state struggle with regularly is service delivery to very rural communities,” she said.

Vermont Foodbank can’t work alone, Stahler said.

“Those organizations are absolutely critical,” she said of local food pantries like the one in Holland. “They are the ones who neighbors see and know.”

She anticipates that the Holland Food Shelf’s closure will force residents to drive farther for help  and put more strain on regional assistance providers.

Marci Diamond, a local resident who has volunteered at the Holland Food Shelf, echoed Stahler’s concerns. 

“It’s a very rural, very isolated community,” she said.

Diamond said many locals who frequented the organization were veterans, young families and sometimes farmers “who grow food, and still can’t afford to feed themselves and their families.”

Diamond also noted there was no grocery store in Holland. 

“Not everybody has the ability to drive,” she said.

Trevor Gray, chair of the Holland Select Board, said the town was in a tough position when it requested a higher rent from the food pantry. He said the operational costs for the building surpassed the income the tenants generated by over $30,000. 

Nonetheless, he said, the board was “extremely disappointed” that an agreement could not be made to continue the food pantry’s operation. He said he understood that Stevens’ nonprofit was under a great deal of pressure from federal cuts, but added that “it’s just unfortunate for the people that utilize that service.”

Stahler said relying on small local budgets for food assistance can be problematic. 

“There’s an overeliance on tiny community organizations to really fulfill the basic needs of their neighbors,” she said. “How do we fill that gap? … That is a really difficult question.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘We had no choice’: Holland Food Shelf to shut down amid federal funding losses.

This commentary is by Monique Priestley of Bradford. She is a Vermont state representative for Orange-2.

I share Vermonters’ anger and deep concern over the Scott administration’s decision to release sensitive SNAP data to the Trump administration. This action was not legally necessary, ethically defensible nor protective of the privacy and dignity of our neighbors.

Gov. Phil Scott’s administration stated that Vermont had no choice but to comply. Meanwhile, national privacy and legal experts — including the Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Protect Democracy — made clear in their detailed May 2025 analysis that the USDA’s request violated several federal laws, specifically the Privacy Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act and the E-Government Act. 

USDA failed to meet legally required steps before requesting Vermonters’ personal data, including publishing notices for public comment, creating a privacy impact assessment and establishing a system of records.

Attorney General Charity Clark recognized this clearly and was prepared to challenge the legality of this request. Instead, the Scott administration chose to comply without meaningful resistance, despite the fact that at least 20 other states refused on solid legal grounds. Vermont chose compliance over protecting Vermonters’ privacy and civil rights.

The damage this disclosure causes is real and immediate. Vermonters’ personal data — including Social Security numbers, addresses, income and household information — is now unnecessarily exposed. Such data can be misused in decisions regarding housing, employment, education, healthcare, insurance, loans and immigration. It threatens Vermont families with discrimination, surveillance and loss of critical support programs. Most troubling, it undermines trust, discouraging people from seeking the assistance they need for fear their information will be used against them.

I have spent the past several years leading efforts in the Legislature to strengthen Vermont’s data privacy protections. Many fellow legislators joined this tripartisan fight and supported comprehensive privacy laws, only to face a veto from Gov. Scott in 2024 and significant industry opposition again in 2025. We could have acted sooner to prevent this exact situation. Some politicians now speaking out publicly failed to step up when it mattered most: when we were in the trenches, crafting meaningful legislation to protect Vermonters’ privacy.

Leadership is not speaking up only when headlines break. It requires showing up every day, pushing back against powerful lobbyists and taking tough, principled stands when no one is watching. Vermonters deserve genuine, consistent advocacy, not opportunistic statements issued after the fact.

Today, I urge Vermonters across all political parties to unite behind strong data privacy protections. Privacy is a fundamental issue that transcends partisan divides. Democrats, Republicans, Progressives and Independents alike share core values of freedom, dignity and protection from unjust surveillance. We must turn our collective concern into sustained action and demand that our elected officials fully commit to passing strong privacy laws.

I believe we have an obligation to lead proactively on these issues. Privacy rights affect us all, and protecting Vermonters’ dignity and personal freedom must remain central to our shared mission.

Vermont can lead again by enacting enforceable privacy protections that respect and safeguard every resident’s personal information. I will continue fighting for these critical rights, and I ask Vermonters everywhere to join me in holding all elected officials accountable.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rep. Monique Priestley: A response to Vermont’s SNAP data disclosure.

This commentary is by Mike Pieciak and Sue Minter. Pieciak is the Vermont state treasurer and Minter previously served as executive director of Capstone Community Action, secretary of the Vermont Department of Transportation, state representative and state director of recovery after Tropical Storm Irene. The Task Force on the Federal Transition was convened by Pieciak and co-chaired by Minter.

Vermonters have learned a hard lesson from past disasters: Being prepared makes a difference.

The Covid-19 pandemic, Tropical Storm Irene and devastating floods of recent summers have shown that when we plan ahead and protect our state, we keep Vermonters safe, businesses open and costs down. Today, we must use this same approach as the Trump administration threatens the security of workers, families and our communities.

Vermonters are already feeling the impact of the MAGA agenda. Inflation is worsening, tariffs are driving up costs for businesses, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are tearing families apart, and important programs like Medicaid and food assistance are being slashed. The stock market may be riding high, but this bears little resemblance to the reality of most Vermonters. 

Across our state, there is deep anxiety about how President Donald Trump’s policies are affecting our neighbors, the cost of living and the most vulnerable among us. To better understand the impact of these changes as they unfold — and develop recommendations to protect Vermonters from incoming and future changes — the State Treasurer’s Office convened the Task Force on the Federal Transition.

Meeting regularly since January, the task force included a range of local leaders and heard from local and national experts about how federal changes are impacting Vermonters, our economy and the state’s fiscal health. 

As a small, rural state, Vermont is especially vulnerable to any shifts in federal support. On a per capita basis, Vermont receives about 36% more federal funding than the average U.S. state. Federal funds, meanwhile, account for roughly 35% of our state budget. 

Over the past decade, Vermont has also been the fourth-highest recipient per capita among all U.S. states of disaster-related federal funding. With the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency now in question, any loss in disaster-related support would shift more costs to states, businesses and taxpayers.

In our communities, ICE raids and changes to immigration policy have stirred needless terror and dislocated neighbors and family members. This has also added pressure to Vermont’s already strained workforce, driving up costs in critical industries like health care, agriculture and housing.

At our northern border, Trump’s rhetoric and tariffs are dramatically impacting Canadian travel to Vermont. In March, April and May, year-over-year private-vehicle crossings from Canada into Vermont were down about 35%. This sudden drop in Canadian visitors is hurting our state’s $4 billion tourism industry, which many of our rural communities rely on. 

When Washington, D.C., changes course or tone, Vermonters feel it here at home.

Recently, the task force published a final report with 11 recommended actions to make Vermont’s economy more resilient to federal policy changes. The recommendations include creating a state natural disaster recovery reserve, convening nonprofit leaders to strengthen services, and establishing a state office of new Americans to coordinate resources for foreign newcomers and help grow our workforce and economy. 

Across all recommendations, the report delivers a clear message: Vermont must prepare now for a future with fewer federal dollars, greater economic uncertainty, and higher costs for workers and families. 

We cannot control what is going to happen in Washington, D.C., and we cannot fully replace the federal support that is being cut away. But we can organize, plan ahead and take proactive steps to provide the best outcomes possible to Vermonters.

This work takes on even greater importance under Trump’s domestic policy bill, which was passed after the work of the task force was completed. In the coming years, cuts and new requirements to programs like Medicaid and SNAP will kick tens of thousands of Vermonters off their health insurance and cause children across the state to go hungry. 

This will trap more families in poverty, strain social services and drive up costs for everyone. It’s a historic betrayal of the working and middle class.

Recognizing these challenges, we must lean into our strengths as Vermonters: strong communities, a deep care for our neighbors and a shared commitment to protecting the place we call home. We must work together and prove once again that when we stand shoulder to shoulder, we can build a better future for everyone. 

That won’t change — no matter what happens in Washington, D.C.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Mike Pieciak and Sue Minter: How Vermonters can prepare for a future with less federal support.

This commentary is by Rebecca Holcombe of Norwich. She is a Vermont state representative for Windsor-Orange 2.

On March 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order directing all federal agencies to break down “information silos” and gain “unfettered access” to data from every state program funded by the federal government. 

This includes a terrifying array of data: your psychiatric and health records, detailed financial data, photos, and more, all to be consolidated into a single massive federal surveillance database.

Then, last month, the Trump administration ordered states to turn over sensitive personal and financial data from Americans who have used SNAP, a food assistance program, in the past five years, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, 21 states and Washington, D.C., sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking to block the order.

Vermont was not one of those states.

Instead of joining those leaders who are standing up for their residents, Gov. Phil Scott handed over the data — without the consent of affected Vermonters. No press release. No consultation. Just quiet compliance.

Let’s be clear: This is not abstract. 

According to Vermont Public, these records include “names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and home addresses of all members of any household in Vermont that received SNAP benefits in the past five years.” The Scott administration even plans to share your specific food purchases. 

At least 1 in 5 Vermont households is affected. Many of them are working families, children, U.S.-born children of immigrants and people who lost jobs during the pandemic. 

This wasn’t just a technical decision. This was a political decision — and a moral one.

Other leaders said no. 

Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky called the order what it is: unlawful. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta called it “a bait-and-switch of the worst kind.” As he put it, “SNAP recipients provided this information to get help feeding their families — not to be entered into a government surveillance database or be used as targets in the president’s inhumane immigration agenda.”

Why didn’t Scott do the same? Why didn’t he stand with other states to fight back? Why didn’t he give Vermont’s own attorney general, Charity Clark, a chance to resist in court? As Clark told Vermont Public, “(The Scott administration is) approaching this in a way that prevents me from being able to join a lawsuit.”

This is not how Vermonters expect our government to behave. Data collected to ensure that Vermont children do not go hungry is now being used to fuel a federal surveillance regime. It is a betrayal of consent, a violation of trust, and a direct contradiction of Vermont’s proud tradition of protecting privacy and resisting federal overreach.

This isn’t about “waste, fraud and abuse.” In 2024, Vermont had the fifth-lowest SNAP payment error of any state — a level even the Trump administration deems acceptable. The federal government explicitly stated that Vermont does not need corrective action on SNAP. So if they are demanding our personal information, it’s not to solve a problem with SNAP. It’s to serve a different agenda.

And yes, there’s an obvious and immediate threat: immigration enforcement. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who requested the data from Vermont, has publicly called for “mass deportations” and “no amnesty under any circumstances.” The fear is not hypothetical. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already using data-mined insurance claims as a “deportation tool.”

Now, thanks to Scott, ICE and other federal agencies may have access to the updated addresses and immigration statuses of tens of thousands of Vermont residents. Vermont did not send the National Guard to round people up, but we did tell the federal government where to find them.

Even federal technologists have warned against what’s happening. In a public resignation letter, 21 staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency wrote:

“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services.”

But that’s exactly what Scott enabled. Once this data has been handed over, it cannot be taken back.

The people of Vermont deserve answers. We deserve to know what was shared, with whom and why. We deserve to know why our state’s leadership broke ranks with other governors who chose to defend their residents. We deserve to know how the Scott administration will protect the people who are now at risk: neighbors, children and families whose only “crime” was asking for help to eat.

Vermonters do not believe in big government surveillance. We do not believe in handing ICE a search engine to find our friends. We certainly do not believe helping feed your kids should cost you your privacy.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rep. Rebecca Holcombe: Why does Gov. Phil Scott want to give DOGE your grocery list?.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s administration complied with a federal request last month to share sensitive data on thousands of Vermonters who receive nutrition assistance from the government — a move that has drawn sharp criticism from top Democratic officials and the state’s leading advocacy organization for fighting systemic food insecurity. 

The Republican governor said the federal government was well within its legal rights to ask for the data, and that his administration was merely following the law by providing it. But Democrats, including Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, pointed to how 20 other states have challenged the legality of the same request in a federal lawsuit. The suit, which was filed last week, is currently pending before a judge in San Francisco.

Disagreement over whether Vermont should have pushed back, too, underscores how leaders at the highest levels of state government have adopted different tacts in response to the slew of controversial actions the Trump administration has taken since the start of the year.

Vermont Public first reported that Scott’s administration handed over data about recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.

“Capitulating to the Trump Administration will not keep Vermonters safe from their harmful agenda,” Mike Pieciak, Vermont’s Democratic treasurer, said in a statement. “The President’s threats are often hollow and they do not withstand legal scrutiny. But the choice not to fight will have real and immediate consequences for Vermonters.”

At issue is a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture request that state governments, before July 30, disclose certain details on people who have received, or applied to receive, SNAP benefits since the start of 2020. That information should include, per a department memo, names, birthdays, social security numbers and addresses.

Vermont Public reported that Scott’s administration is not providing the federal government with information related to people’s immigration status.

The request, according to the agriculture department, was making good on a Trump executive order aimed at curbing “waste, fraud and abuse” in SNAP programs and improving federal officials’ access to information about who is receiving benefits.  

About 65,000 people in Vermont currently rely on the state’s SNAP program, which is known as 3SquaresVT. However, as many as 14,000 of them, including 1,600 refugees and asylum seekers, could lose access to some or all of those benefits in the coming years under cuts laid out in the GOP-led spending bill Trump signed into law last month. 

Scott’s office said in a statement late Tuesday that “although the federal government’s approach has been unnecessarily political,” Vermont had no choice but to comply because the feds are “legally entitled” to the information they asked for. His office also contended that not complying with the order “could put thousands of Vermont’s most vulnerable at risk.” 

“When there is clear evidence of harm to Vermonters, the Scott Administration will continue to push back against such decisions and requests,” the governor’s office said. “Despite all the political drama on this issue, this is not one of those moments. Again, the facts matter. And the facts here are clear: everything we have provided to the federal government is within the limits of long-established law.”

The states that sued the Trump administration, though, have a different interpretation of that same request. In the lawsuit, led by Democratic attorneys general from California and New York, state leaders argue that the agriculture department’s request is illegal because individuals’ data is likely to be used for purposes beyond the scope of administering SNAP benefits — namely, conducting immigration enforcement, they said.

The suit also contends that the Trump administration has threatened to hold up funding for SNAP benefits in retaliation against states that have not turned over recipients’ data. The attorneys general have asked a judge to block the department from collecting the personal information in question and to bar the department from withholding funds. 

“USDA’s attempt to collect this information from Plaintiff States flies in the face of privacy and security protections in federal and state law,” the lawsuit states.

Vermont’s Democratic attorney general, Charity Clark, has sued the Trump administration more than two dozen times since Trump took office in January. Last month, she joined a multistate suit challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ move to share Medicaid recipients’ personal data with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees federal immigration enforcement.

Clark said Wednesday that her office wanted to sue to block the SNAP data sharing, however, “the governor’s approach has everything to do with why Vermont is not a party to that lawsuit.” 

She declined to elaborate on Scott’s decision, citing her role as the state’s chief litigator.

“The governor and I have taken different approaches at times. But he’s the governor, and this is his prerogative,” Clark said.

Scott’s decision also drew opposition from advocates for nutritional assistance programs in the state.

Anore Horton, executive director of the nonprofit Hunger Free Vermont, called the governor’s decision “troubling” in a statement Wednesday. The organization is also urging people to write to the governor with their opposition to the move. 

“This is a clear overreach,” Horton said, referring to the data sharing. “It violates both the law and the basic expectations of privacy that millions of families rely on when they apply for SNAP. States are being forced into an impossible position: comply and risk violating the privacy of their resident, or refuse and face political retaliation.”

Scott has not granted all of the Trump administration’s wishes in recent months. In late July, for instance, he denied a White House request for a dozen members of the Vermont National Guard to do clerical work supporting federal immigration enforcement. The guard members would have been stationed in St. Albans, which is home to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. Scott said he did not think the request was an effective use of the state government’s limited resources. 

Earlier this year, though, Scott was at odds with a group of Democratic state senators over the senators’ calls for him to terminate a contract that allows federal immigration authorities to hold detainees at state-run prisons. Senators said ending the agreement would send a clear message that Vermont wasn’t willing to cooperate with the Trump administration’s toughened immigration enforcement. However, Scott — along with some advocates — argued ending the contract might mean detainees would be transferred to other states where they might face worse detention conditions. 

Scott has publicly criticized Trump for years and voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. He made national headlines in 2020 when he was the only Republican governor in the country to publicly announce his vote for Joe Biden.

Since the latest election, though, he’s repeatedly argued that steps Vermont takes to oppose the Trump administration could make the state — which is heavily reliant on federal dollars to support key government services — a target for a president who has long used retribution as a governing tactic.

“As the Governor has said, we cannot live in chaos for the next three and a half years,” Scott’s office said this week. “Vermont will continue to evaluate all requests and actions by the federal administration based on reality — not rhetoric.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott faces criticism over decision to share SNAP recipients’ personal data with feds.

Thousands of Vermonters could lose access to nutritional benefits funded by the federal government in the coming years as a result of cuts laid out in the sweeping Republican-led spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law last month. 

The reductions, along with many other measures in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are designed to fund parts of Trump’s domestic policy agenda, including an extension of tax breaks that estimates show will benefit wealthy people the most, as well as major increases in funding for border security and immigration enforcement, among other changes. 

State officials and advocates emphasized in recent weeks that they haven’t yet tallied the full impacts the tax and spending package could have on Vermont. But a number of provisions, they said, will undoubtedly make it harder for people to access food using the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

About 65,000 people currently receive SNAP benefits — commonly known as food stamps — in Vermont, according to Ivy Enoch, policy director for Hunger Free Vermont, a nonprofit that advocates for ending systemic hunger in the state. Her organization estimates as many as 14,000 of them could see nutritional benefits they rely on reduced or eliminated entirely as a result of the legislation. 

“This will make it harder for people to meet their most basic needs,” Enoch told VTDigger. “Fundamentally, it will cause harm to every one of our communities — and it is also forcing our state to contend with really difficult decisions.”

Vermont’s SNAP program is called 3SquaresVT. People are generally eligible for the program if their household income is equal to or below certain thresholds established by the federal government, or if they receive the state’s earned income tax credit. The vast majority of SNAP benefit recipients in Vermont are children, older adults and people with disabilities, Enoch said.

Currently, many SNAP recipients between the ages of 18 and 59 are required to report to the federal government that they are working, or participating in a work training program, in order to receive their benefits. But the new law expands that work reporting requirement to certain people up to 65 years of age.

There are certain exceptions to those reporting requirements, including for parents with teenage kids. Currently, parents of children under age 18 can be exempt from requirements to work, but under the new law, many parents will only be able to claim an exemption if they have kids under 14. People experiencing homelessness, veterans and young people who have aged out of foster care could also be subject to new work reporting requirements, Enoch said.

Proponents of the changes have argued they would ensure more people are working and that SNAP benefits are reserved for people with the greatest needs. But research has shown that existing requirements do not increase employment and have only pushed more people off of the safety net program. 

Enoch said many SNAP recipients who can work, do work.

“This rule will be expanded to more people, who will need to take more time — that they don’t have — to fill out complex paperwork and submit it to the state,” she said. “And the state will then need to review more paperwork, creating more burden on both.” 

Hunger Free Vermont estimates many people in the state will start to face the prospect of losing their SNAP benefits in February 2026, though the timeline is not entirely clear, Enoch said.

A more immediate impact, she said, will be felt by immigrant communities in the state. Starting Oct. 1, under the new law, refugees and asylum seekers — who have lawful status to live in the U.S. — will no longer be able to access SNAP benefits. Hunger Free Vermont believes about 1,600 people in Vermont will no longer be eligible for federal nutritional benefits because of that change. 

The legislation also restricts future increases to the value of the nutrition plan the federal government uses to determine how much money many SNAP recipients should receive. Under the new law, the value of this “Thrifty Food Plan” will continue to reflect established cost-of-living increases. But barring future updates to the underlying value of the plan could mean SNAP payments lag over time, Enoch said.  

Beyond the cost of food for individuals, the legislation is also expected to put new pressure on states, including Vermont, to pay for administering SNAP programs.

While the federal government pays the cost of SNAP benefits, it shares the cost of administering SNAP programs with individual state governments. Right now, that burden is shared 50-50. But it’s slated to change starting in October 2026, Enoch said, to a cost share that’s 75% on states and 25% on the feds.

The Vermont Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office reported last week that this change will cost Vermont $8 million a year starting in 2026. It’s one of many fiscal changes, prompted by Trump’s return to the White House, which state legislators will need to contend with when they return to Montpelier for the 2026 legislative session next January.

Other advocates have said a reduction in the number of people receiving SNAP benefits in Vermont could have broader impacts on the state’s food system.

The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont runs a program called Crop Cash, which leverages federal funding to multiply the dollar value of SNAP benefits when recipients use them at local farmer’s markets. SNAP recipients spent more than $385,000 at markets across the state in 2024, according to the organization’s data. 

The organization is not immediately concerned about funding for the program itself. But if fewer people are shopping at farmer’s markets because they cannot afford to without SNAP benefits, local farmers could lose out on income, which could be a potentially painful hit on already tight margins, said Jessica Hays Lucas, a policy organizer for the association. 

“We’re just going to have so many fewer dollars in circulation,” she said, referring to SNAP benefits.

Read the story on VTDigger here: 14,000 Vermonters could lose nutritional benefits under Trump’s spending package.

At Dog River Farm on Tuesday, Allison Levin and three volunteers salvaged nearly 150 pounds of rainbow chard which would otherwise have been destroyed. 

Next, staff at Community Harvest of Central Vermont, of which Levin is founding executive director, will deliver those vegetables to local groups which provide food assistance near the Berlin farm — Capstone Community Action in Barre and the Montpelier Food Pantry, among others. In Montpelier, people have been lining up for hours before Levin’s Tuesday morning deliveries, which represent a large fraction of the fresh produce offered by the city’s food pantry, she said.

Community Harvest is one of a number of such organizations in Vermont which work both to strengthen nutrition assistance programs and to lessen food waste. Often, they are nonprofits which receive little or no public support. But as food assistance becomes more stretched in Vermont, and public funding for farmed food dwindles, local leaders say gleaning is an important way to help meet the state’s needs.

With thousands of Vermonters potentially set to lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits over the next few years — an outcome of sweeping federal cuts to the program — Levin thinks there will be greater need for gleaning work in the state.

“The work that we’re doing is going to be in even higher demand,” she said.

Gleaning is the practice of retrieving produce, or food more generally, that would otherwise go to waste. The produce Levin collects consists of what farmers call “seconds” — a fraction of the yield that isn’t flawless enough to sell in most grocery stores. The vegetables are still safe and edible, they just have dimples, bends or other deformities.

George Gross, who owns Dog River Farm, said without the service Levin provides, he would have to simply till the abandoned plants back into the soil. 

Waiting for gleaners to arrive can be costly for farmers, Gross said, because growing seasons are short and the small nonprofits “can only do so much.” Produce donors across the state have also told gleaners that public reimbursement for donated produce would be helpful. But for Gross, it is important that his produce goes to good use, and equally that it stays local in Levin’s small network of partners.

“I want this food to stay in my community,” he said.

Gabe Zoerheide, the executive director of Willing Hands in Norwich, said he combines field work and garden crops with in-kind donations and wholesale recovery to deliver roughly a million pounds of food a year. 

Perishable food is a crucial part of any response to food insecurity, he said, not least because fresh products tend to be more expensive to purchase. Willing Hands provides nearly half the fresh produce at Upper Valley Haven, one of the largest food pantries in the state. In total, Zoerheide’s team delivers to about 80 recipient organizations in Vermont and New Hampshire.

“This can provide a source of nutritious food to (clients) that they can count on,” said Michael Redmond, the executive director of Upper Valley Haven, which also operates temporary shelters in White River Junction.

But in areas farther north, gleaning programs sometimes have a less robust presence.

Amy Hornblas, executive director at the Neighbors in Action food pantry in Cabot and Lyndonville, said agricultural gleaning feels like an untapped resource in the area. At the moment, Hornblas said, her organization doesn’t receive much gleaned produce, but she hopes to change that.

Neighbors in Action recently drew attention for drawing such high demand that the Lyndon selectboard grew concerned about the volume of traffic through downtown. Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans counties all show higher rates of poverty and food insecurity than the state averages, according to a 2023 Northeast Kingdom Human Services report. 

“There is an abundance of food,” said Hornblas in reference to surrounding farms. “We just gotta move it.”

Hillary Hust-Barber, the gleaning manager at Salvation Farms, said her team of two full-time employees is currently covering all of Lamoille Valley and the Northeast Kingdom.

Hust-Barber is also the administrator for the Vermont Gleaning Collective, which onboards volunteers and shares information between the state’s food recovery organizations. Neighbors in Action will host an event Aug. 9 at Salvation Farms in Morrisville to gather volunteers for gleaning in the area.

Richie Hourihan, owner of Cabot Smith Farm and donor to Salvation Farms, agreed it was a matter of labor. Up to 20% of his yield can be seconds, but he can’t collect it himself.

And the food, he said, ought to be salvaged. “All vegetables are perfect,” Hourihan said.

Although gleaning networks can play an important role in bolstering food access across Vermont, their leaders acknowledge that local food assistance systems cannot fully replace the scale of federal programs. Even though the work he does is important, Redmond said, it is “dwarfed” by the resourcing behind programs like SNAP.

Zoerheide agreed. 

“I’m not going to pretend that we can make up the difference, but we are committed as an organization to do everything we can to meet more of the need,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Gleaning operations help meet rising need in a stretched Vermont food assistance network.

This commentary is by Kendra LaRoche of Manchester. She is a member of the Upper Valley DEIA Solidarity Group and executive director of the Special Needs Support Center in White River Junction.

In recent weeks, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget proposal that would make the deepest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (food assistance) in our nation’s history — slashing vital programs that thousands of Upper Valley residents depend on to survive.

As a member of the Upper Valley DEIA Solidarity Group and someone who works closely with our region’s disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous and rural neighbors, I cannot stay silent.

If these cuts become law, the impact on our communities in Grafton and Sullivan Counties in New Hampshire, and Windsor and Orange Counties in Vermont would be nothing short of devastating.

Medicaid cuts: loss of life-saving health care

The bill proposes mandatory work requirements for Medicaid coverage — a policy the Congressional Budget Office estimates would cause over 7.6 million Americans to lose health care.

In the Upper Valley, we estimate that approximately 59,700 people with disabilities rely on Medicaid for care. Many cannot work due to disability, and yet these cuts would force them into an impossible choice: prove “worthiness” or lose coverage.

Adding insult to injury, the bill would ban Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care — targeting some of our most vulnerable LGBTQIA+ neighbors at a time when attacks on trans rights are already escalating

SNAP Cuts: a recipe for hunger and hardship

The proposed cuts to SNAP are equally brutal:

• Nearly $300 billion in funding cuts — the largest in the program’s history.
• New work requirements extended to adults aged 55–64 and parents of school-age children — groups who already face barriers to employment in rural areas.
• A shift of costs to states — likely forcing reductions in benefits or eligibility.

Who will this hurt? Rural, Disabled, and BIPOC families in our region who are already struggling to afford housing and transportation — let alone groceries

The local picture: Upper Valley at risk

Consider just a few facts:

• In Grafton County, New Hampshire, 10.1% of residents — over 9,000 people — identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color. In Sullivan County, it’s 5.6%. These communities already face disproportionate health disparities and economic barriers.
• LGBTQIA+ residents across the Upper Valley rely on Medicaid for mental health care, gender-affirming care and primary care — all under threat.
• Over 585 people with disabilities served by the Special Needs Support Center alone stand to lose crucial supports if Medicaid and SNAP funding are gutted.
• Rural hospitals in New Hampshire and Vermont — already financially fragile — could be forced to close as Medicaid revenues disappear. This would leave entire towns with no local healthcare.

A call to our senators

I urge our New Hampshire and Vermont Senators — Sens. Shaheen, Hassan, Sanders and Welch — to stand up for the most vulnerable among us and publicly oppose these budget cuts.

Medicaid and SNAP are not luxuries. They are lifelines. They are the difference between a child having dinner or going hungry, between an elder accessing needed medication or ending up in the ER, between a trans person accessing affirming care or facing discrimination and despair.

Our senators have long championed healthcare access and rural justice. We ask them now to vote NO on any budget that balances its books on the backs of disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous and rural residents.

The Upper Valley deserves better. Our neighbors deserve better. We must protect Medicaid and SNAP — not destroy them.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Kendra LaRoche: We must not balance budgets on the backs of our most vulnerable.

Dear Editor,

I joined the Shelburne Food Shelf over ten years ago when there were about 30 families coming for help. Over time, that increased to 40 or 45 households per month. During the pandemic, the number of households served grew to between 90 and 100 families per month. Today, that peak has turned into a high plateau with 130 families served each month.

The increase is due to Inflation and to wages that have not kept pace with costs. Please remember, this is Shelburne, a relatively affluent town in Vermont; the census in less affluent towns is higher.

Right now, the Congress is getting ready to vote on huge cuts to food aid in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. These cuts will leave children and families hungry — not food insecure — hungry. Food shelves alone cannot provide enough food for entire families 365 days per year. 

SNAP benefits 66,500 Vermonters and the cuts considered will shift $38 million to the Vermont state budget if Vermont can maintain the benefit. Experts say this shift is not sustainable. Our state covering this entire additional cost seems unlikely, given the current budget. 

Yet Congress appears willing to make these cuts. They appear willing to force hungry people to prove they are working; this is when many people that use food shelves cannot do that. They work in our cash economy as housekeepers or day laborers and, therefore, cannot provide pay stubs. 

Families are getting by on a day-to-day and week-to week basis. Nearly 35,000 Vermont SNAP recipients live in households with a person who is disabled or an older adult. These households have already been devastated by inflation and are likely to be further hurt when tariffs (a regressive tax on lower income individuals and families) flow through the system. 

The cuts go beyond SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and include further cuts to farm to school programs and even to food inspection and safety standards. Remember that 2 months ago the USDA slashed $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program which will hurt food banks, the main supplier of food to local food shelves. 

Congress is making a choice to give tax breaks to the wealthiest rather than provide food to hungry Americans. This is unconscionable — and we will not forget.

Susan Stock

Former Shelburne Food Shelf board chair and current volunteer

Read the story on VTDigger here: Susan Stock: Proposed SNAP cuts would hit Vermont hard.

This commentary is by Ivy Enoch of Richmond, SNAP policy and training lead at Hunger Free Vermont.

Earning a college degree is challenging, especially for Vermont students who balance school, jobs and family while working to put food on the table. Fortunately, a new policy change now makes it easier for Vermont’s community college students to access 3SquaresVT, the state’s name for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to help with grocery expenses so they can focus on success in school.

As of October 1, 2024, Vermont’s Department for Children and Families adopted a policy that eliminated a prohibitive work activity requirement for community college students seeking to gain eligibility for 3SquaresVT. 

This policy change recognizes that mandating work requirements is simply not effective at incentivizing work, because 80% of CCV students are already employed while pursuing their degree. The student work requirement does nothing other than create arduous and burdensome paperwork requirements, posing a legitimate barrier to 3SquaresVT for students simply trying to meet their basic needs while learning. 

This policy aligns Vermont with other states like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington and Connecticut, which have taken similar steps to support community college students by increasing access to programs like SNAP that help with basic living expenses. By removing the student work requirement, Vermont is supporting the food security of our community college students.

So, what does this mean for CCV students? If you’re enrolled in a two-year associate degree or certificate program (excluding liberal studies students) you no longer have to meet the “student work requirement” to qualify for 3SquaresVT. Benefits are provided on an EBT card, which works just like a debit card, and can be used at grocery stores and farmers’ markets in VT, across the country, and even online. A family of three who meets income requirements could receive up to $768 every month for groceries.

National studies show that students attending community colleges are more likely to face challenges when it comes to getting enough food for themselves and their families. In fact, nearly one in four students at community colleges struggle to afford groceries — this is an unacceptable reality. 

CCV, under guidance from President Joyce Judy, has dedicated great attention and resources to the issue of food and basic needs security among students. The institution has created robust student resource centers at every campus, holding in-person classes where students can access staple foods, a hot meal and support from a trained peer mentor in navigating program applications like 3SquaresVT. We see this as a best practice, one worth investing in. 

We commend CCV and President Judy for their commitment to their students’ well-being, and for being a vocal supporter of this shift in 3SquaresVT policy.

This policy is a win for students, families and Vermont’s economy. By ensuring students have access to the support they need to stay healthy and nourished, they are better positioned to succeed in school and their future careers. No one should ever have to choose between food or books for class. It’s a victory for all of us who believe in the power of education to transform lives.

We commend Vermont’s Department for Children and Families for adopting this common-sense policy. By making it easier for community college students to access 3SquaresVT, they are not only addressing the immediate needs of students but also contributing to the long-term success of the state’s workforce and economy. 

To all CCV students: we encourage you to see if you qualify for 3SquaresVT! You may be leaving behind grocery money that you rightfully deserve. If you want or need some support through the application process, call 2-1-1 and ask for 3SquaresVT assistance, text VFBSNAP to ‘85511’ or visit vermontfoodhelp.com to learn more.

Thank you, Vermont Department for Children and Families, for this important step forward. With this change, Vermont is leading the way in supporting community college students, ensuring they have the resources they need to succeed both in the classroom and in life.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ivy Enoch: Vermont eases access to food program for community college students.

This commentary is by Ivy Enoch, SNAP policy and training lead at Hunger Free Vermont.

As we mark the 60th anniversary of the Food Stamps Act, now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) nationally and 3SquaresVT here in Vermont, it is crucial to recognize the profound impact this landmark legislation has had on reducing hunger and poverty across the United States.

Since its inception in 1964, SNAP has become a cornerstone of our nation’s work to end hunger, ensuring millions of Americans have access to nourishing food to lead healthy lives. Studies have consistently shown that SNAP not only helps to put food on the table but also contributes to better long-term health, educational outcomes, and economic stability.

Every $1 spent on SNAP generates $1.79 in economic activity. In State Fiscal Year 2023, over $214 million in SNAP benefits were issued to Vermonters. These federal dollars give people the autonomy to buy the groceries that are right for them and their families, when and where they want.

In Vermont, the impact has been equally significant. More than 65,000 people across the state benefit from 3SquaresVT — helping to ensure that children, working adults, college students, people with disabilities, older adults and many others can afford the food they need to thrive. However, many more are eligible for this vital state program and are not yet tapping into its support. 3SquaresVT is for everyone who qualifies, and we all deserve this benefit in times of need.

At Hunger Free Vermont, we believe that everyone deserves access to the nourishing food they love, and programs like SNAP are essential in moving us toward a more equitable future. The benefits of SNAP extend beyond individual households; the program brings important federal dollars into Vermont’s economy, supports local retailers and farmers and helps ensure that future generations are well-fed and thriving.

As we celebrate and reflect on how SNAP has served so many in the last 60 years, we can’t ignore the unfortunate truth that SNAP is under threat. In early 2023, as Congress geared up to revisit and ultimately reauthorize the 2018 Farm Bill, Hunger Free Vermont and our allies delivered a set of policy priorities to Sens. Sanders and Welch, and Rep. Balint, informed by hundreds of individuals across the state.

That message was clear and remains the same: protect SNAP and other federal nutrition programs no matter what. Our senators and representative heard that message and centered the voices of Vermonters, and for that, we deeply thank them.

Instead of a reauthorization, Congress passed a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, which ensured that funding for SNAP and other federal nutrition programs would not lapse. This year, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees finally took up the Farm Bill, resulting in two dangerously different visions for the future of food security and agriculture policies.

While the Senate proposal included measures to protect and strengthen SNAP, House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson’s Farm Bill framework proposed to slash SNAP over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office estimates a Thompson Farm Bill would result in a $30 billion cut to SNAP over 10 years. In Vermont, that would mean a $50 million cut to SNAP between FY2027 and FY2033.

These cuts would disproportionately affect older adults, children, people with disabilities, and veterans, exacerbating the challenges they already face in accessing nutritious food. A Farm Bill that doesn’t protect SNAP would harm all of us in Vermont — not only SNAP participants but also food shelves and pantries, farmers and markets, and our local businesses and retailers. We can’t let this happen.

Now more than ever, we need to unify our support of SNAP and champion the program that supports tens of thousands of Vermonters, and our state food security efforts as a whole. We hope you’ll join us in advocating for a Farm Bill that strengthens SNAP and ensures its responsiveness to the injustice of hunger. We encourage everyone to see if they qualify for 3SquaresVT. To learn more about the program, visit vermontfoodhelp.com.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ivy Enoch: Why SNAP must be protected for future generations.

Audrey Bridge has been working at food shelves in Vermont for over 15 years and has never seen anything like what she’s experienced this month at the Rutland Community Cupboard.

“It’s been so overwhelming,” Bridge said in an interview Thursday. “We’re just trying to keep enough food on the shelf for the clients. We’re seeing them lining up outside two hours before we open sometimes — even in the rain.”

Bridge, the Rutland organization’s executive director, said the food shelf has seen a “mind-boggling” influx of demand in the past year, culminating in its busiest month in recent memory. According to Bridge, the Rutland Community Cupboard served nearly three times as many people this December as it did last December.

“Right now we’re really just dancing around as fast as we can to try to keep up with the demand,” said Bridge.

Rutland isn’t unique. All across the state, food shelves are reporting a staggering increase in demand in the past year. Staff attribute the uptick to the loss of pandemic-era benefits coupled with a series of crises that have affected communities around the state. 

Residents were already struggling in the face of inflation, and many have been impacted by a mounting substance abuse crisis. Then, catastrophic flooding hit the state, first in in July, again in August, and then again earlier this month. 

Andrew Courtney, director of Foodworks, a Brattleboro-based food shelf, said the number of people seeking food assistance “has definitely increased drastically this year.”

According to data shared by the organization, it has served nearly 2,000 new people — individuals with no prior record of having visited the food shelf — since December 2022. 

Northeast Kingdom providers have experienced a similar upswell in demand. The Hardwick Area Food Pantry, which has locations in Hardwick, Craftsbury and Albany, has seen a nearly 30% increase in customers since March, according to data provided by the organization. 

And in Montpelier, the food shelf run by the nonprofit Just Basics, which was displaced and changed locations after the July floods, has served twice as many people this December as it did in December of 2021.

Representatives from these organizations said that the increase in demand could mainly be traced back to this past spring, when extra pandemic-era food benefits ended for thousands of Vermonters.

Beginning in March 2020, those benefits provided over 40,000 Vermont families with roughly $6 million a month in total additional funding through 3SquaresVT, the Vermont food benefits program funded through the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to data provided by the Vermont Foodbank. 

“The pandemic created a higher need, and that need was met with an influx in federal food and resources from philanthropy to purchase food for distribution,” Carrie Stahler, the Vermont Foodbank’s manager of government and public affairs, said in an email to VTDigger. “But it takes a long time for people to financially recover from a disaster.”

In the years prior to the pandemic, the Vermont Foodbank, a nonprofit that distributes food to food shelves and meal sites across the state, distributed about 600,000 pounds of food per month on average, an amount that rose to just over 1 million pounds at the end of 2021 during the pandemic, according to data provided by the organization. 

That number reached a peak of 1.42 million pounds in August following the July floods. In October, the most recent month for which there is available data, the Foodbank distributed 1.34 million pounds of food, still a substantial increase from pre-pandemic and pandemic-era norms.

For Andrew Courtney of Foodworks in Brattleboro, increased expenses due to inflation without sufficient pay remain the biggest obstacle facing Vermonters.

“Since inflation really peaked, there are so many people in our community that are living paycheck to paycheck and any unexpected expenses that pop up really threaten food security for a whole lot of people,” said Courtney.

“It’s expensive to be alive right now,” said Courtney. “I think that’s the main story.”

Disclosure: VTDigger is currently running a member drive with the Vermont Foodbank as a partner. Staff coordinating the drive had no involvement in the assigning, production or editing of this story. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Expensive to be alive’: Food shelves across Vermont are getting swamped.

Facing a funding shortfall driven by unprecedented demand, the Northeast Organic Farmers Association of Vermont has paused a popular local food access program, which connects low-income Vermonters with produce and goods at area farmers markets.

The program, called Crop Cash, was available to Vermonters who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, through which they receive money to purchase food at some stores and farmers markets. When people spent SNAP benefits at local farmers markets, they would receive a matching amount of Crop Cash, in the form of a coupon, which they could use to buy fruits, vegetables, herbs, culinary seeds and plant starts. 

This year, the farmers association — known as NOFA — introduced Crop Cash Plus, which gave Vermonters additional crop cash to purchase other SNAP-eligible goods, such as bread, eggs and meat. 

Crop Cash was meant to address a persistent conundrum: Across the country, environmental advocates often encourage consumers to buy local food as a way to reduce emissions from transporting goods and as a benefit to the local economy. Yet that option is frequently more expensive and out of reach for people with lower incomes. 

The program — which is available to people whose household income is equal to or less than 185% of the federal poverty level, and to those who have children and receive Vermont’s earned income tax credit — helped to close that access gap, according to NOFA and farmer’s market officials. 

This year, it also benefited farmers whose fields had been turned into lakes by nearly unprecedented flooding in July, according to Johanna Doren, local food access coordinator with NOFA. 

Participants get Crop Cash coupons at a tent at participating farmers markets, where anyone can swipe a debit or credit card in exchange for tokens. There, they swipe their electronic benefits transfer card, tell the vendor how many of their SNAP benefits they’d like to use and receive a matching amount in Crop Cash coupons — up to $20 in Crop Cash and $20 in Crop Cash Plus for using $20 of SNAP dollars.

In a typical year, a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture covers the organization’s entire budget for the Crop Cash program. 

But this year, NOFA budgeted $170,000, driven by a one-time state allocation to pilot Crop Cash Plus. Due to the surging demand, though, the organization ended up distributing twice as much — some $330,000 in coupons — which it paid for through additional fundraising, according to Lauren Griswold, director of NOFA’s food access program. 

Participants used Crop Cash in 16,500 transactions this season, Doren said, though NOFA does not track the number of individuals or families that use the program.

“We thought that it would be able to last us through the winter,” Doren said. “But unfortunately, the rate of use was just a lot higher than we ever would have expected due to a lot of unforeseen factors.”

She thinks that demand increased because more Vermonters with kids became eligible for SNAP benefits. Also, some participants used the program even more as they dealt with financial consequences of the summer flooding. 

As a result, participants will not be able to use any outstanding coupons already distributed to them, and no additional coupons will be distributed for use at winter farmers markets. The pause in the program took effect on Dec. 1 and will last through April 2024, which is the expiration date on the current coupons. NOFA ended Crop Cash Plus in October. 

At least one manager of a local farmers market is unhappy with NOFA’s inability to continue the program through the winter. 

Cassie Morse, manager of the Northfield Farmers Market, said some of her customers create their food budgets with their benefits, Crop Cash included, in mind.

“You print and distribute coupons with expiration dates on them, and essentially that makes them legal tender,” she said. “And then suddenly you’re saying it’s no longer accepted.”

The Northfield Farmers Market —which is online in the winter — has distributed $691 of now-unredeemable Crop Cash, Morse said. She’s frustrated about being put in the position of likely needing to turn away participants with the coupons. 

Morse said she alerted her customers about the Dec. 1 deadline to use their crop cash, and as a result, received a bump in orders on Nov. 30.  “People didn’t want to leave that money on the table,” she said. 

Doren said she understands that the glitch is “incredibly disappointing,” particularly for people who have planned their budgets assuming the use of Crop Cash. 

Participants have used 95% of the coupons that have been distributed this year, Doren said. 

“I think it’s also important to underscore that we’ve distributed basically triple the amount this year through incentive coupons as we did last year,” she said. 

Doren said NOFA expects the program to return in the summer of 2024, though the organization hasn’t decided whether to accept this year’s coupons during next summer’s season. 

In the meantime, officials with the organic farming association plan to boost the program’s budget through additional private fundraising and to advocate in the Legislature for an allocation of state funding. NOFA is asking the state for $478,000 to support Crop Cash, Crop Cash Plus and several other programs. 

That request could be a tough sell for state lawmakers, who also must contend with the financial fallout from the July floods. 

“The bottom line here is: incredibly strong demand exists for this program from all involved (limited-income Vermonters, Vermont farmers, and Vermont farmers market managers), but the program simply won’t be able to meet this demand without a greater level of financial support,” Griswold wrote.

Asked whether the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets will support NOFA’s request, Secretary Anson Tebbetts wrote in an email that the agency is in the middle of the budget process and doesn’t know where it will land. 

“We will know more in a few weeks,” he wrote. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Farmers association presses pause on popular local food access program.

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., and 313 of her colleagues supported a debt ceiling deal Wednesday night that included major Democratic concessions but skirted a catastrophic default. The bill now heads to the Senate, where Vermont’s U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch have pledged to vote no and yes, respectively.

“They were bad choices,” Balint told VTDigger of the vote in an interview Thursday morning. “That’s what I need people to understand.”

With lawmakers and economists biting their nails as a June 5 deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, or face default, quickly approached, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Saturday struck a high-stakes deal.

On the line was a potential economic catastrophe: Without legislation to raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. government would default on its debt obligations, likely plunging the nation into recession and imperiling funding for its most basic functions, including government programs like Medicare, Social Security and veterans benefits.

With an unruly Republican majority holding control of the House, Biden and fellow Democrats made major concessions to appease a caucus intent upon injecting conservative social policy into the spending package. 

Included in the final deal are inflation-adjusted domestic spending cuts, the imposition of new work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries, the reinstatement of federal student loan payments after a more-than-three-year hiatus, expedited permits to construct a West Virginia natural gas pipeline fiercely opposed by environmentalists and more.

Balint equated her vote to choosing the lesser of two evils. Republicans had taken the economy hostage, she said, and “nothing great comes of hostage negotiations.”

“I had two choices before me, both of them bad — one catastrophic, and one distasteful,” Balint said. “So I went with the distasteful one.”

In the three days that elapsed until the House ultimately voted 314-117 on the deal late Wednesday, Balint — Vermont’s lone, first-term House member — teeter-tottered back and forth on whether she’d cast a yea or a nay, she recounted to VTDigger the morning after the vote. 

When she first heard the broad strokes of the deal during a Sunday briefing, she said she thought “the damage could have been much worse,” given Republicans’ initial list of demands, and was leaning toward voting yes. Come Monday, as more details emerged, she began to sway in the other direction. By Tuesday, she told Vermont Public, she was “leaning no.”

Come Wednesday morning, Balint said she and other Democrats attended a two-hour briefing with White House officials, during which she changed her tune. Given that Democrats are in the minority — “an uncomfortable place to be” — Balint said she came away thinking that “the president and his negotiators actually did a really great job.”

That doesn’t mean she’s happy with the final product of the deal — but she pointed her finger at Republicans for the pain she said she knows will ensue as a result of the bill.

“Do I know that some people are going to have long-term, hard impacts on their lives because of what the Republicans have done? Absolutely,” Balint said. “But the alternative was much worse.”

When it came time to cast her vote, she said, she was at least pleased that the deal struck raises the debt ceiling for not one, but two years — staving off a similar standoff during next year’s presidential election campaign season, when political tensions are at their peak.

The battle over the debt ceiling has dragged on for months, and some Democrats have voiced regrets for not preemptively tackling the issue while they held both chambers of Congress last year (before Balint arrived in Washington). But as for conservatives’ ability to hijack what she said should have been a purely fiscal debate, Balint pointed to McCarthy’s tumultuous rise to the Speaker’s dais in January.

“This is the result of those 15 rounds of votes we had for the speaker,” Balint said. “The extremists were driving the conversation then. The extremists are driving the conversation now. So in order for McCarthy to become speaker, he had to make a whole bunch of side agreements… He gave over a lot of power to the extremists in order for him to have the gavel.”

Balint said the schism within the Republican Party was apparent Wednesday when dozens of Republicans refused to vote “yes” on a procedural vote to even take up the bill — forcing Democratic lawmakers to double back and change their own votes to “yes” so that debate could proceed. “That was a really clear indication to me about the Republican conference not only being incredibly extreme, but also chaotic,” Balint said.

She had already made up her mind to vote “yes” on the bill by that point, but watching the GOP splinter on the procedural vote, Balint said she was assured “that the stakes were incredibly high, and that I could not at all gamble with Social Security benefits, Medicaid benefits — because that’s what would happen if we were to default.”

Ultimately, 71 House Republicans voted against McCarthy’s deal, adamant that the spending cuts did not go deep enough. More Democrats, 165, voted “yea” than Republicans, 149. 

Now the bill heads over to the closely divided Senate, where Vermont’s senior senator Sanders and junior senator Welch have pledged to vote no and yes, respectively.

In a lengthy written statement issued Wednesday evening, Sanders said, “The best thing to be said about the current deal on the debt ceiling is that it could have been much worse.”

“Deficit reduction cannot just be about cutting programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly, and the poor depend upon,” Sanders said. “It must be about demanding that the billionaire class and profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes, reining in out-of-control military spending, reducing the price of prescription drugs, and ending billions of dollars in corporate welfare that goes to the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests.”

Welch, on the other hand, said in a written statement Thursday afternoon that the stakes are too high to risk defaulting.

“America has always paid its bills — in full and on time. We must continue to do so,” Welch said. “Default would be catastrophic to Vermont families, communities, to our country, and America’s standing in the world.”

With the caveat that he said he must review any amendments made to the House bill, Welch said, “I fully expect to vote yes to make certain America preserves our historic commitment to meet its obligations.”

Sanders, meanwhile, asserted that “this bill is totally unnecessary” for the nation to meet its debt obligations. He argued that Biden could invoke the 14th amendment to eliminate the debt ceiling without having to entertain House Republicans’ policy demands.

“I look forward to the day when he exercises this authority and puts an end, once and for all, to the outrageous actions of the extreme right-wing to hold our entire economy hostage in order to get what they want,” Sanders said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘They were bad choices’: Balint votes reluctant yes on debt ceiling.

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As unemployment claims pour into the state and residents await their federal stimulus checks, Vermonters are tapping into another way to keep themselves afloat during the Covid-19 crisis: SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps.

The number of people applying for new or renewed 3SquaresVT benefits — the state’s branch of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — grew from a weekly average of 390 to more than 2,000 from March 30 to April 3, according to data from the Department for Children and Families, which administers the program.

While the number of new applications has since slowed, with only 698 applications last week, DCF is still noticing a big uptick in calls, said Sean Brown, the deputy commissioner of the department’s economic services division.

Vermont is not alone. While national data is not yet available, states like Georgia, California and Connecticut have reported a rise in SNAP applications. The increase comes as food banks are raising the alarm about increasing demand. 

“We’ve always understood that we are supporting the most vulnerable Vermonters,” Brown said.

But Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, said she believed the number of people applying was “very good news.”

“It means that people suddenly thrown into economic hardship knew it was available as an option,” she said.

She said it concerns her more that many of the people applying to the program may not be eligible because of federal limits on who qualifies by income and other factors. 

“There are a lot of people in Vermont right now who are not able to make ends meet, and we want everyone who’s had a change in income to apply for 3Squares and every other benefit available,” she said.

The state has taken new measures to loosen eligibility requirements for 3SquaresVT. They have suspended work requirements and waived in-person interviews. DCF is also allowing a delay for people to show that they have applied for unemployment benefits, since the claims system has reported issues, Brown said.

The federal government has also raised some benefits for people on SNAP benefits. Households will soon get their “full allotment,” meaning the most that the federal government would provide someone of their household size, Brown said.

“So if you’re a one-person household receiving $100 in benefits per month, you can go up to the maximum allowed amount of $194 per month,” Brown said.

Horton said even before the crisis, the benefits level was too low for many families to survive on. Hunger Free Vermont runs a “3SquaresVT Challenge” each year to ask Vermonters to try to live off of the benefit provided by the federal government — about $36 a week for a single person as of November 2019.

The federal government has not changed rules about where recipients can use their SNAP benefits card, called an EBT card. Since people with the card have to physically swipe it at a cash register or terminal, they typically can’t use the cards for online orders — like the grocery delivery apps that many people are using to minimize their contact with others during the Covid-19 crisis.

To try to enable 3SquaresVT recipients to use remote grocery shopping options, DCF is leasing retailers mobile “point-of-sale” terminals starting this week that they can bring to someone’s home during a delivery, Brown said.

Vermont is also one of the few states that has a “cash out” program in place for older Vermonters and those with disabilities to receive their benefits via direct deposit, Brown said. This gives qualified beneficiaries the ability to pay for deliveries or curbside pickups online or through an app.

Horton praised the work of DCF, saying the department had taken advantage of “every possible waiver and provision” available through new federal rules.

State officials are also trying to implement an extension of SNAP payments for families with children on their school’s free and reduced lunch program. DCF is working with the Agency of Education to identify households that had qualified for free and reduced lunch but were not yet on SNAP, so those families can get paid for providing their kids’ extra food.

“We think there are about 14,000 households that are eligible to receive that benefit,” Brown said. DCF hopes to issue those payments in May.

The turnaround time for some to receive benefits has not changed, DCF said. The agency took strict measures at the start of the crisis to make sure they could keep up with demand, including extending their hours and authorizing more overtime for their call center employees.

“We saw ski areas closing early on for Covid and were starting to see an uptick in calls,” Brown said. “So we started implementing those changes early.”

Most applications still start online, but people can walk into a district office and answer questions through the phone in the lobby or through a window, he said.

Despite the rise in applications, the new applications have so far been a small percentage of the 38,500 total people in the state on SNAP benefits, a decline from a post-recession high of 52,000 in 2013, Brown said.

But if the crisis continues far into 2020, the state’s caseload will start to catch up, Brown said. 

“There’s always a little delay in our caseload,” he said. “So we’re asking, what will the economy look like three months or six months out?”

Horton said the fact that it is now “easier than ever” to apply is an advantage for the Vermont economy. 

“It brings federal dollars into the state for our stores, who really need it right now,” she said.

Vermonters can apply for 3SquaresVT through the DCF website. Hunger Free Vermont also maintains a list of ways to access food during the Covid-19 crisis on its website.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Food benefits applications skyrocket amid Covid-19 crisis.

Barre is ringed by grocery stores: Shaw’s and Price Chopper to the north, Hannaford to the south and Quality Market up the hill heading outside of town.

But the heart of downtown has lacked a grocery store since a former Grand Union closed after a corporate sale more than a decade ago. That leaves no grocery store in walking distance —  downtown residents without cars must take a bus to get to one, Mayor Lucas Herring said in an interview this month.

Another option has filled the gap, with mixed reception: dollar stores. Two Dollar Generals — one at the northwest end of the city and another store at the southern end — are closer to the city center than the closest grocery stores, and they sell cheap staples like canned goods, frozen microwave-ready meals, household goods and plenty of snacks.

For low-income families, the arrival of chain dollar stores can make food shopping more accessible and affordable. But the stores’ offerings don’t fully meet the needs of consumers, and low prices can put pressure on competitors with more diverse and fresh products.

Barre is not the only town that has experienced a dollar store boom.

Vermont had at least 60 dollar stores in 2018, nearly double the number of stores six years before, according to USDA data. That’s similar to national trends: The number of dollar stores nationally grew from fewer than 20,000 in 2011 to 29,000 in 2018.

The number of convenience stores that accept food stamps has also increased, rising from 200 in 2008 to 346 a decade later, according to USDA data on retailers that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, known in Vermont as 3SquaresVT.

Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores have come to a state where many low-income residents are struggling to find food. The Vermont Department of Health estimates that 30% of low-income towns are more than 15 minutes from a grocery store, and USDA data shows a lack of food options for far-flung rural Vermonters and urban Vermonters without transportation.

If there’s no population to support a store, there will be no grocery store, said Jane Kolodinsky, an economist and food researcher at the University of Vermont. But when the grocery store leaves, there are fewer amenities to support that rural population. 

“It’s a further cause of the decline of rural America,” she said.

Extra time to make a grocery store run can be a burden, particularly for low-income Vermonters, said John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank.

“It can be really challenging to get to a full-service grocery store, and when you do it’s much more expensive,” he said. “If you’re a single mother with kids, you have a limited food budget, and you are spending a portion of that budget on fresh food your kids might not even eat, and you have to prep? It’s a full-time job being poor.”

Sayles has a mixed opinion of dollar stores. They have food available at prices often lower than other places, and in urban areas they’re accessible to people without cars. And careful shoppers could get nutritious meals out of the canned goods and frozen staples sold in dollar stores.

Yet a full grocery store would provide far better options, he said. (Vermont Foodbank received $100,000 in a settlement between Dollar General and the Attorney General over deceptive pricing.)

Kolodinsky said dollar stores tend to have more processed food laden with calories and saturated fat. While the arrival of dollar stores in areas without grocery stores gives people local food shopping options, it doesn’t necessarily address the issue of access to affordable, healthy options.

“I worry there will be a proliferation of places where you can get food, and the conversation [on food deserts] goes away,” she said. “But that shuts off the conversation of what kind of food people have access to.”

Searching for veggies in the Granite City

Barre was a thriving industrial town at the turn of the 20th century, but the decline of its granite industry has led to economic struggles. More than a quarter of residents in Barre City are below the poverty line, double the Vermont average. Little data exists on car ownership, but about 27% of residents don’t drive themselves to work, higher than the rest of Vermont.

Residents of downtown Barre tend to be poorer than those in the surrounding hills of Barre Town, said Nick Landry, president of Granite City Grocery.

Landry is familiar with the grocery store divide in Barre. A longtime resident, he has been working to get a cooperative grocery store off the ground in the city since 2013. His father, Bruce, recalls the old Grand Union, now the home of Lenny’s Shoe & Apparel. “That store was profitable, but the company wasn’t,” Bruce said.

Locals have some sporadic food options, like a seasonal farmers market and the Capstone food bank and community group. There are convenience stores as well, but one owner said he’d been struggling to compete since Dollar General opened up down the road. 

“We can’t buy items wholesale as cheap as they can, and we can’t compete pricewise. They have so much buying power. They even sell tobacco and alcohol,” said Rick Dente, owner of Dente’s Market. 

Dente’s, on the main road, Route 302, just north of downtown, sells snacks, basic foods and alcohol along with some fresh fruits and deli meats. The end of Burlington News Agency’s magazine distribution has hit it hard as well, and the magazine rack sits nearly empty with just a few hobby magazines. Dente said he plans to close the store next year and try to re-open it with a new focus.

Other nearby stores have pivoted their business to gain an edge. Quality Market, a locally owned grocery store up the road from Barre, started offering fully cooked meals and a bigger produce aisle to draw in daily customers. 

“We have found our niche is really our new entrees and our meat department. There aren’t very many places where you can get custom cut-to-order steak,” said Pam Trag, owner of Quality Market. 

Nick Landry hopes to target a still-unfilled market — residents who want produce and affordable groceries within walking distance. 

“People downtown are keenly aware Barre’s a food desert,” he said. “People with cars just come from Shaw’s and bounce to Hannaford.”

Right now, Granite City Grocery, still in early planning stages, is working on getting new members. Seven hundred households have signed up to join the cooperative. Landry envisions the store combining low-cost staples with more expensive specialty produce, hoping that income from the latter will help keep the former affordable.

Hunger Free Vermont is also working with local officials to map food access in Barre. Monica Taylor, Hunger Free’s representative on the project, said other “hunger councils” across the state are keeping an eye on it as a model to clarify a complex issue. 

One area of the state has been more successful in getting grocery stores into its downtown — Burlington. After a major grocery store closure, the city commissioned a study that led it to award City Market the chance to replace its old store in 1999. 

But there’s still a divide, Kolodinsky said. “If you look at where the major grocery stores are, they’re not downtown. They’re on the outskirts.”

It’s all about access and cost, Sayles said. “There’s plenty of food available. The reason we have hunger in Vermont is people don’t have money to buy food, or they don’t have money to pay for transportation to buy the food.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Dollar stores are filling Vermont’s food deserts. Are they helping?.

[V]ermont’s Department for Children and Families is opposing the Trump administration’s proposal to restrict eligibility for food stamps, saying the changes could cut off benefits worth $7.5 million to about 5,200 households in the state.

“We believe that the families that would be impacted really need this benefit,” DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz said Wednesday.

Planned rule changes to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as 3SquaresVT in Vermont, would also affect schools. Children whose families participate in the program are automatically eligible for free and reduced meals at school, and the changes could potentially impact over 4,600 Vermont children.

Nationally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a little over 3 million people would lose food assistance if the changes go into effect.

Trump administration officials have argued they are simply fixing a “loophole” to ensure the program only helps those who properly qualify. But critics, including Vermont officials, say the changes will hurt the poor and counterproductively incentivize low-income people not to save money.

“The American people expect their government to be fair, efficient, and to have integrity,” USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “That is why we are changing the rules, preventing abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it.”

Existing rules allow states to waive some eligibility criteria in certain situations. Schatz says that’s not a loophole – it’s flexibility that allows states to build programs with a local context in mind.

“When we look at the cost of living in Vermont – it’s relatively high,” Schatz said.

To qualify for food stamps, a family’s income must fall below a certain amount. And certain households cannot have assets – like savings – that exceed $3,500 or $2,500, depending on the family’s composition. But many states, including Vermont, waive the requirement that a family’s assets fall below those caps.

Nicole Tousignant, the senior policy and operations director at DCF, said the caps on assets set by the federal government are out of step with many people’s expenses.

“Those levels are extremely low. They wouldn’t even allow you, if you owned a home, to have enough to pay your property taxes, potentially,” she said.

Under one of the proposed changes, for example, a family of two in which at least one member is disabled with a net annual income of $16,910 will no longer qualify for benefits if it has savings worth over $3,500.

“It requires people to become financially destitute before they reach out for help,” said Faye Mack, the advocacy and education director at Hunger Free Vermont.

Hunger Free Vermont is leading a public campaign to push back on the changes. The nonprofit encourages Vermonters to submit feedback to the USDA on the rules by Sept. 23.

The changes could also have a profound trickle-down effects on schools.

“If the number of families who qualifies for SNAP benefits decreases, that could impact the number of schools who are able to provide free meals to all students,” said Agency of Education spokesperson Kate Connizzo.

Children whose families no longer qualify for 3SquaresVT will lose automatic enrollment in the free and reduced lunch program offered by schools. While those students might still qualify, they will have to submit a separate application, and school officials often complain that paperwork gets in the way of low-income families accessing beneficial programs.

Meanwhile, eligibility for a slew of federal grants and programs often depend on how many children in a school qualify for free and reduced lunch. If the number of children in any given school who are eligible dip below a certain rate, that school might suddenly find itself ineligible for such programs as fresh fruit and vegetable grants or discounted internet access. Teachers who work at those schools could also lose access to loan forgiveness programs.

When 40% or more of the students at a school or group of schools are directly certified for free meals, then the school can also provide universal free meals.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Food stamp cuts would impact thousands in Vt..

[A] proposed federal rule change could eliminate nutrition-assistance benefits for some Vermonters.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced it will tighten work requirements for adults without disabilities or dependents who receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – known in Vermont as 3SquaresVT.

It’s not yet clear how severe the repercussions will be in Vermont, and it’s also not clear whether Gov. Phil Scott’s administration will oppose the change.

“Based on what we know now, it would have some impacts in Vermont,” said Sean Brown, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families Economic Services Division. “We still need to do a lot of work to analyze the proposed rule in total.”

Others say they will fight the federal proposal because it could unfairly penalize some who are unable to work.

“We know that taking food away from people does nothing to help them find jobs,” said Faye Mack, advocacy and education director at Hunger Free Vermont.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, billed by the federal government as “the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net,” provides benefits to low-income individuals and families. At last count, it serves more than 40 million people nationwide.

As of the end of October, state statistics show there were 71,176 Vermonters enrolled in 3SquaresVT. The average benefit for all Vermont households is $221 per month, or $369 per month for homes with children.

But President Donald Trump’s administration believes there are more people receiving those benefits than there should be.

There already is a federal rule that says “able-bodied adults without dependents” can receive nutrition benefits for only three months in a 36-month period unless they are working or “participating in a work program.”

However, he Department of Agriculture says most states have federally approved waivers for some or all adult participants so that the work rule doesn’t apply. Many of those waivers date to the Great Recession of the late 2000s, the department says, but the waivers have not been revised even as unemployment rates have dropped.

As a result, federal officials say “nearly half” of able-bodied adults who would be affected by the work rule reside in an area covered by a waiver.

“The department believes waiver criteria need to be strengthened to better align with economic reality,” department officials wrote in their proposed rule revision. “These changes would ensure that such a large percentage of the country can no longer be waived when the economy is booming and unemployment is low.”

Among the rule changes proposed by the federal government are eliminating statewide waivers in most cases; limiting the duration of waivers; ending the “carryover” of work-rule exemptions from year to year; and requiring the use of standardized economic data to support waiver requests.

Federal officials emphasized that the changes would apply only to non-disabled adults between the ages of 18 and 49 with no dependents. Those who are elderly, disabled or pregnant would not be affected.

The number of able-bodied adults without dependents who receive nutrition assistance in Vermont was not immediately available on Thursday. But Brown said there are work-rule waivers covering some portions of the state, so there likely would be some Vermonters affected by the proposed rule change.

The Department of Agriculture says it is aligning the nutrition program with Trump administration ideals of “self-sufficiency, well-being and economic mobility.”

“Long-term reliance on government assistance has never been part of the American dream,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Thursday. “As we make benefits available to those who truly need them, we must also encourage participants to take proactive steps toward self-sufficiency.”

Brown said the state has had “some success” in recent years in its effort to better equip nutrition-program beneficiaries for the workforce.

“Vermont has focused a lot of time and resources on supporting these people in order to help them develop the tools and skills to be able to participate in the job market,” he said.

Mack acknowledged that the state has a successful employment program. But from Hunger Free Vermont’s perspective, it’s clear that the Trump administration is interested in “kicking people off of SNAP,” she said.

The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is just 2.8 percent, less than the national rate of 3.7 percent. But Mack said that statistic doesn’t necessarily tell the story of those who don’t have adequate transportation, the ability to afford child care or access to jobs that fit their skills.

“Vermont has a pretty low unemployment rate,” she said. “But the thing we know is that Vermonters have a diverse array of barriers to employment.”

Mack said the federal rule change also could lessen the nutrition program’s ability to respond to greater need during future economic downturns.

She said Hunger Free Vermont will encourage Vermonters to “raise their voice on behalf of their neighbors” when a public comment period opens on the proposed rule change. She added that “the entire Vermont congressional delegation has already reached out to us.”

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., noted that Trump signed a new farm bill on Thursday. During the debate over that bill, lawmakers “considered changes like the one the administration now seeks through rule-making and rejected them in favor of workforce training programs that actually help Americans get and keep employment,” Leahy said.

“These rules will do nothing to ‘restore the dignity of work’ and instead are a direct challenge to the decisions made by Congress in the bipartisan Farm Bill,” Leahy said.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Trump is “attacking the poor” with the new rule proposal.

“We should be expanding programs like food stamps that lift people out of poverty, not making them even harder to access,” Sanders said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal change could cut food benefits in Vermont.

As Congress works towards a finalized version of a sweeping agriculture bill, there is uncertainty about the future of one of the nation’s leading food security programs, commonly referred to as food stamps.

Hunger-focused organizations in Vermont are closely watching Congress for changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The U.S. House wants to drastically reform the food security program by raising income eligibility levels and expanding work requirements for participants in the program. The U.S. Senate would keep the food stamps program in tact.

The reforms are part of a reauthorization of the five-year farm bill. Both chambers of Congress have passed versions of the legislation and are now preparing to settle on a compromise.

The House proposal would likely lead to thousands of Vermonters losing access to the program, according to statistics from the Department for Children and Families, which administers SNAP in Vermont.

If Congress adopts a proposal in the House bill that would bar states from using a higher income eligibility level than the federal standard of 130 percent of the federal poverty line, nearly 24,000 recipients in Vermont would lose the benefit.

Under the expansion of work requirements categories in the House bill, nearly 11,000 more recipients of the program in Vermont would be required to work.

The Senate version of the bill passed with broad bipartisan support on a vote of 86-11. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voted for the bill. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., did not vote on final passage because of travel, according to an aide. But he was a player in drafting the legislation and voted for it in earlier procedural stages.

The farm bill crafted in the House split the chamber along party lines, in part because of disagreements over the proposed cuts to SNAP. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., joined all Democrats in voting against the bill, which passed on a razor thin 213-211 vote.

The House bill expands the categories of people who would need to work in order to receive the benefits. Adults with dependents under age 18 are currently exempt from work requirements. Under the House proposal, only those with dependents under age 6 are exempt. Current law exempts people over age 50 from work requirements. The House bill raises the threshold to age 60.

The bill includes some money to build out work training programs to support recipients. Supporters say the measure will help people enter the workforce. Critics say the proposal does not invest enough in training programs.

The Senate bill did not adjust work requirements. Instead, it included changes aimed at expanding access, by making it easier to use SNAP benefits at farmers markets, for example.

Hunger-focused organizations in Vermont are closely watching developments with the legislation as it proceeds.

John Sayles, who heads the Vermont Foodbank, is concerned that the changes in the House legislation would result in fewer people being able to access food through the federal program.

“If there are changes to the work requirements in line with what’s in the House bill, we’re going to have a lot more people showing up at food pantries and meal sites,” he said.

Sayles said the Vermont Foodbank would likely not be able to meet the needs of those who lose the benefit under the program. The organization would need to increase the amount of food it distributes, and build out capacity to transport and store food.

“The charitable food system does not have the capacity to make up for a reduction in the ability of people to get SNAP benefits,” Sayles said.

The Vermont Foodbank is trying to prepare for what lies ahead, but he said it is difficult to anticipate how the program may be addressed in the final version of the farm bill.

“There is both the chance that whatever comes out of the conference committee won’t make enough draconian cuts to the SNAP program for the House to pass it, or will make too many cuts to SNAP and other programs for that bipartisan coalition to remain together in the Senate,” he said.

Faye Conte, of Hunger Free Vermont, said the organization strongly supports the Senate version of the bill because it does not change work requirements, it supports an existing work training pilot program, and it improves access to farmers markets, and more, she said.

“The way the programs are working right now are really working and they don’t need a lot of changing,” she said.

While recipients of the program could use higher benefits, she does not see an immediate need for that, Conte said.

“In the political climate we’re in right now, a farm bill that doesn’t do a lot to change SNAP is a really strong farm bill,” she said.

Conte is not sure what middle ground lawmakers might find on the issue in the conference committee, because the differences are philosophical.

“They’re based on ideology. I’m not sure where the compromise lies,” Conte said. “They are starting from really opposite ends of the table.”

Leahy, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday that he sees a strong commitment in the Senate to oppose the House’s changes to the program during the conference committee process.

“What encourages me is that we got a very, very strong bipartisan effort to preserve SNAP in the Senate version of the farm bill,” Leahy said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Thousands of Vermonters could lose access to food stamps.

After more than two years of negotiation, Congress early this month passed a compromise farm bill that reduces spending by an average $16.6 billion per year and sets a course for the next five years of farm policy under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“It has been a long trip getting this far,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement last week. Leahy serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee and had a spot on the conference committee that hammered out a compromise bill that both chambers were able to pass.

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross said last week that despite the many compromises that went into writing the bill, it is “a win for agriculture both in Vermont, and on a national level.”

The omnibus Agricultural Act of 2014 governs spending and programs within the USDA. The Congressional Budget Office projected the bill’s cost to be $956 billion over 10 years, or close to $100 billion per year. Of that, about 79 percent is allocated to nutrition programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Dairy policy and nutrition spending were the two major sticking points during the lengthy congressional negotiations, which began early in 2012. The 2008 farm bill expired in September 2012, though Congress extended many of its provisions for the next year.

During that time, the Senate and the House repeatedly failed to agree on nutrition provisions, with the House passing one version of the bill that reduced nutrition spending by some $39 billion over 10 years. The bill that ultimately passed includes a projected $8.6 billion nutrition spending decrease over 10 years.

Vermont’s congressional delegation expressed disappointment that the bill cut nutrition spending at all, but relief that the cuts were relatively minimal. In a statement last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “It is both morally and economically wrong to cut assistance to families in a very difficult economy,” and said he would work with Gov. Peter Shumlin to restore SNAP benefits to those who will lose them through new restrictions in the farm bill.

NO SUPPLY MANAGEMENT

The farm bill’s dairy provisions were the last to be solidified in the conference committee.

Initial versions of the bill, including versions that passed the full Senate and the House Agriculture Committee, included a dairy market stabilization program designed to rein in wild fluctuations in dairy commodity prices.

The so-called supply management program, which had been a major hope for many Northeastern dairy farmers, would have required farmers participating in a new dairy crop insurance program to reduce milk production when dairy prices fell. The program would have scaled back milk payments for farmers who produced more than their average seasonal output instead of leading to an oversupply of milk on the market and further decreasing commodity prices. These provisions aimed to stabilize the market and, in turn, reduce the need for USDA price supports.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the supply management reforms “Soviet-style,” and blocked their inclusion in the bill. Late in the farm bill process, however, Leahy reinstated the margin insurance program in the bill, though not the supply management program.

Leahy called supply management “a common sense dairy policy,” pinning its failure on Boehner and “some of the very powerful, huge industry figures from out West.”

The margin insurance program replaces the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC), which paid dairy farmers when prices dropped below a certain amount in order to supplement their milk checks. With the new program, dairy farmers must pay insurance premiums, with very low costs for farms producing less than 4 million pounds per year — about 150 cows — and higher premium costs for larger farms.

The program no longer issues payouts based on the price of milk; rather, payments are triggered when the difference between feed price and milk price falls below a certain amount. This new program attempts to reflect a farm’s expenses and income, rather than income alone.

The bill also creates a new program that authorizes the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to purchase surplus dairy products for donation to food banks when dairy margins are low.

Ross said last week that the new program will provide “a necessary safety net for the bedrock industry of Vermont agriculture.”

Bob Wellington is a senior vice president and dairy economist at the milk cooperative Agri-Mark, which owns Cabot.

He agreed that the margin protection was good news for Vermont farmers, but said the proposed dairy market stabilization program would have made even more sense financially, for the federal government and for Vermont farmers.

“We had a program that was going to save money, work better in the marketplace, and they said they didn’t like it,” he said. “Unfortunately, (the margin insurance program) is probably going to end up costing the government more money if milk prices drop.”

Prices in Vermont have remained above $20 per hundred pounds of milk, or hundredweight (cwt), since September 2012. This is in stark contrast to the lows of 2009, when milk prices hit $12 per cwt, well below the cost of production for most dairy farmers.

But Wellington said that a recent dip in corn prices, and continuing high milk prices, mean that dairy farmers will begin increasing production, which could send milk prices falling as early as next year. And though it’s predictable, there’s little that Vermont or Northeastern producers can do to impact that cycle.

“Sometimes (dairy farmers are) their own worst enemy because they’re so efficient and so productive,” Wellington said.

On balance, however, Wellington said the bill could have been worse.

“Speaker Boehner did a lot of damage,” he said. “The only thing that kept it from being a very bad farm bill on dairy was that Leahy stepped in.”

CONSERVATION, ORGANICS, DIRECT PAYMENTS, HEMP

Among the 2014 farm bill’s other provisions, it:

• Eliminates the direct payments program (in which farmers were paid per acre of farmland) for all crops except cotton. The programs are replaced with disaster and crop insurance programs.

• Preserves conservation compliance, requiring farmers who participate in federal crop insurance programs to adhere to environmental guidelines on their farmland.

• Funds the organic cost-share program, which helps producers to cover the cost of organic certification.

• Provides beginning farmers and ranchers with help paying for crop insurance programs.

• Provides additional disaster assistance to fruit and vegetable farmers.

• Allows research institutions and agricultural agencies in states that have legalized industrial hemp production to conduct test plantings without federal repercussions. Vermont is one of nine states that allows industrial hemp production.

The bill also allows states to apply for grants to fund maple research, which Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said was one of his legislative priorities.

“This bill is far from perfect but America and Vermont need a farm bill,” Welch said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Long-fought farm bill substitutes dairy subsidy program with insurance.

While cuts to most social safety net programs are inevitable, the nation’s senior-most senator said Monday the House’s proposed low-income food assistance funding is a “joke.”

“That goes beyond politics, that becomes a moral issue,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Leahy joined Gov. Peter Shumlin Monday for a news conference at the Central Vermont Community Action Council in Barre to announce a bill that creates incentives for donations to food banks.

Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – commonly known as SNAP – has suffered from the expiration of the 2009 economic stimulus and subsequent slashes to federal safety net programs.

The Republican-led House voted to cut $40 billion from the program in September. The Senate’s version of the bill proposes about $4 billion in cuts. A Senate-House conference committee is working on a compromise.

Vermont’s congressional delegation – Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. – oppose the House’s proposed cuts. SNAP funds the state’s food assistance program, 3SquaresVT.

Previous cuts have left Vermont’s 3Squares program too lean and neither the state nor charities can make up the difference, said John Sayles, chief executive officer of the Vermont Foodbank.

“What the federal government does is paramount when it comes to hunger,” Sayles said. “The charitable system cannot make up the slack.”

He said the Vermont Foodbank receives about 40 percent of its food from federal funding. He said the Nov. 1 reduction in food stamp benefits was a $10 million loss for Vermonters in need.

Shumlin said the House’s proposed cuts will force 100,000 Vermonters to go hungry. After Nov. 1, a Vermont family of four saw a $36 per month reduction in 3Squares benefits.

“Are we willing to sit back while the Tea Party folks in Congress say to over 100,000 Vermonters who rely on them to put food on the table, ‘Go ahead, let them go hungry. Instead charge the wars to the credit card and make hungry Vermonters pay the bill’?” Shumlin said.

In an effort to combat anemic funding for the nation’s food assistance program, a bipartisan congressional group, joined by Leahy, will introduce legislation expanding tax incentives for food bank donations.

The Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act would provide tax incentives for small businesses, restaurants and farms to donate to food banks – the same benefit enjoyed by corporations such as Kellogg’s. The incentive would make it practical for small businesses to write off donations to food banks.

Sayles praised Leahy’s push for the bill, but said it will not offset the federal cuts.

“It can’t possibly make a big enough dent,” he said. “We’re really talking about the margins here. … It’s going to take a lot more than some added food donations to really make up the difference for 3Squares funds.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Leahy proposes tax incentives for businesses, restaurants and farms for donations to food shelves.

One in five children in America lives in a family that often does not know where the next meal is coming from. Nearly one million seniors living alone do not have enough to eat on a daily basis. They make painful choices — whether to spend their meager incomes on medicine or dinner. We once called it hunger. Today, it’s called food insecurity.

But whatever we call it, it’s a scourge on the American landscape. The land of opportunity has the highest child poverty rate of any developed country in the world. How can this be, in the richest country on earth?

Statistics do not convey emotion. They shock us for a minute or two, and then we click again. We do not sit down at the dinner tables with the families who skip a meal, or fight hunger pangs by consuming cheap unhealthy food. Contradictory as it seems, malnutrition is a key contributor to obesity.

And we do not see, unless we go there ourselves, the elderly women and men who line up at the food bank several times a week.

The focus of Congress is on keeping the nation secure — and it doesn’t see that food security is an essential part of that responsibility.

Instead of putting more food on the tables of America, they are busy finding ways to take it away. Their strategy is simple: cut the food stamp program, now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Ever since the first food stamp program began in 1939, Republicans have sought to reduce or eliminate it and Democrats have fought to expand it. It was President Lyndon Johnson who gave it a strong push during the War on Poverty.

Like most programs for children and the poor, SNAP does not have a powerful constituency, unlike prosperous farmers who continue to receive big helpings of subsidies.

And, we continue to blame the poor for their own condition. They are lazy. We do not want to know that the poorest of the poor are toddlers under three years of age.

The program is expensive, $74 billion in 2012. But we don’t calculate the cost of malnutrition. One study finds that “Nutrition has been called the single greatest environmental influence on babies in the womb and during infancy, and it remains essential throughout the first years of life.”

Young children who aren’t properly nourished are 31 percent more likely to spend time in the hospital and 76 percent more likely to have problems with cognitive, language and behavioral development.

Can we really afford to cut food stamps when we know we are cutting off the next generation from leading healthy productive lives? The answer is clearly no, but that answer has to be shouted loud and clear to be heard.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Kunin: National security depends on the nation’s food security.

Six months ago, Gov. Jim Douglas hailed a new computerized “central intake system” for Vermonters seeking government benefits as “the best possible way to reach Vermonters.”

The call center, complete with digital document processing, was meant to make it easier for Vermonters who are down on their luck to apply for “economic benefits” — food stamps, government housing assistance or medical care. In the new system, all they had to do was call a 1-800 number or go online to complete an application.

At an elaborate press conference, in which reporters were given a full tour of the newly renovated Benefit Service Center in the state offices complex in Waterbury, Douglas touted the new system as an example of “the kind of transformative change that can really make a difference. It’s imperative to demonstrate to the Legislature how effective this kind of change can be.” Though the new system was paid for through a federal grant, the center was held up as a model for the Challenges for Change government restructuring plan later enacted by lawmakers.

Read the “Douglas touts centralized intake system for state’s poorest residents,” plus VIDEO

That was in March. The system, which was supposed to be fully operational in June, still isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. The online application form wasn’t available until Oct. 4. Wait times for the 1-800 number average 5 minutes, but in some cases can take as long as 20 minutes, according to Steve Dale, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families.

The result? Since July a backlog of applications has begun to build.

Vermonters have had to make repeated calls to the center in order to file an application or find out whether their information has been processed. (The new “paperless” system doesn’t have a notification system letting applicants know where their virtual paperwork is in the process.)

Dale said in an interview that 40 percent of Vermonters who have applied had seen a delay in food stamps eligibility determination of more than 30 days. He said the total number of applicants affected by the glitches in the new system numbered in the “hundreds.”

Under federal government guidelines, the maximum wait time for application processing is set at 30 days.

On Friday, the Washington County Hunger Council and the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger sent out a press release stating that “thousands” of Vermonters have seen delays of two to four weeks for their applications to the 3SquaresVT program. They held a meeting with Dale in Montpelier to tell him that the new system is preventing families from gaining access to benefits they need – including food stamps.

“It’s been going on for months and it doesn’t seem to be getting better,” Smith-Dieng said. “As an advocate, I want it to be better — now.”

There were about 5,000 applicants for 3SquaresVT in September, according to Angela Smith-Dieng, a policy specialist for the Vermont Campaign.

At a rate of 40 percent, roughly 2,000 Vermont households had to wait more than a month to find out if they were eligible to receive food stamps in September, and about 15 percent, or between 500 and 750 Vermonters, based on the average number of applications in a given month — 4,000 – have had to wait as long as two months.

Smith-Dieng described the situation as a “crisis.” She said the Hunger Council has collected the stories of people who have been directly affected by the delays. A family of four applied for food stamps in April when the father lost his job and they didn’t get a phone interview with the center until June, according to Smith-Dieng. They received benefits at the end of July.

Another Vermont family waited two months for a phone interview, only to be told they needed to turn in more paperwork, Smith-Dieng said. A refugee who spoke English as a third language, she said, couldn’t get through the automated phone system because of his accent.

“It’s been going on for months and it doesn’t seem to be getting better,” Smith-Dieng said. “As an advocate, I want it to be better — now.”

The Economic Services Division has cut back on staffing at regional offices, and no longer provides direct services to Vermonters who need to apply for benefits. Instead, the state relies on community action councils, regional nonprofit groups, to help Vermonters negotiate the new system.

In a press release, the hunger groups said community agencies “have tried to help without any additional funding but are frustrated by a system that decreases the number of clients they can serve.”

Beth Stern, executive director of the Central Vermont Council on Aging, said in a statement: “When my case managers spend hours trying to get one client, 3SquaresVT, who has been closed out erroneously, it affects their abilities to work with other clients who may be experiencing health issues, abuse, family problems and caregiver issues. It feels like the state’s lack of planning and foresight has negatively affected both our staff and our clients.”

Dale said the department works closely with nonprofit agencies, and he was surprised that the hunger groups had sent out a press release criticizing the center publicly.

Eighty-five percent to 88 percent of applications are processed within 45 days.

He said 85 percent to 88 percent of applications are processed within 45 days. “There is a problem, but we need to keep it in perspective,” Dale said.

Dale said the total demand for 3SquaresVT has risen by 63 percent over the last three years. The dramatic increase in recipients (one in eight Vermonters uses food stamps) is due in part to the recession and in part to the department’s concerted efforts to provide benefits to a larger group of people.

In 2009, the state changed the eligibility rules so that more people at slightly higher income levels could receive benefits. Any household that is within 185 percent of the national poverty level qualifies for 3SquaresVT now; the cutoff used to be 130 percent, according to Renee Richardson, nutrition program chief for the Department of Children and Families.

Last month, Vermont won a bonus award of $375,889 from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for its expansion of 3SquaresVT in 2009.

At the time, Douglas said in a statement: “Once again, Vermont is recognized as a leader among states in protecting and serving the most vulnerable in our communities. This award recognizes our strong efforts to reach out to Vermonters in need to ensure they have access to critical benefits, especially in these challenging economic times.”

The number of Vermont households receiving benefits as a result of the new rules and the recession went up from 28,000 participating households to 43,000, Richardson said in September.

“We really brought more people through our doors, and we did this intentionally,” Richardson said.

Meanwhile, the department held its staffing levels “steady,” according to Dale, in spite of an onslaught of new beneficiaries. The center is part of “an overall effort to make government as efficient as it can be,” Dale said. Under the modernized system there will be less handling of paper, less driving to district offices and more time for “consumers” and for employees to process applications, he said.

More than 650 Vermonters applied for benefits using a new Web-based form that went up at the beginning of the month, Dale said. Though he doesn’t expect older Vermonters to feel comfortable with the online technology, he said younger people seem to like it. The department has received positive
feedback in a survey of applicants on the site, he said.

At this point, Dale said he doesn’t know when the biggest component of the new system – a digital call-routing program — will be ready for show time. The department is taking the situation “day by day” he said. “Very soon it will be done, and it will have us fully in this new environment where we can much better manage huge increases in workload,” Dale said.

The software sends applications to workers who have the most available time in any given office around the state so that the workload is evened out across the department’s workforce.

“That piece has been stalled,” Dale said. “It’s been technically challenging.”

Weeks go by and families don’t know whether they are going to get access to the food they need, Smith-Dieng said.

Dale said wait times of 20 minutes are unacceptable – he said no one should have to stay on the phone longer than 5 minutes. In the meantime, the department has added temporary workers to its staff and reassigned employees to handle the barrage of applications. He said at this point the number of delayed applications has not continued to rise, in spite of the problems.

Smith-Dieng said she understands the department has had problems, but she said: “Ultimately, we all suffer when these programs aren’t working well for people. It ripples through our families and communities. We (hunger advocates) feel it needs to be said loud and clear that it’s not acceptable, and we want to hold DCF accountable to (get the system to) work the way it’s intended to.”

Weeks go by and families don’t know whether they are going to get access to the food they need, she said. Vermonters come to the community action councils, she said, and they say they’ve applied for food stamps but haven’t heard anything.

“That sort of story is what we hear all the time,” Smith-Dieng said. “That’s not good customer service. The point of the hunger council meeting was to bring that message to the commissioner.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Modernization efforts put food stamps on hold.