[Baltimore Sun] With grocery prices creating ‘hunger cliff,’ two General Assembly bills would help Marylanders buy food
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The hunger rising in Maryland could be lessened by bills in the General Assembly that would increase food stamps and make school meals free.
Senate Bill 35/House Bill 666 would increase the minimum monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit, also known as food stamps, from as low as $23 to $95 for 74,000 households. Senate Bill 579/House Bill 696 would provide universal free school meals in the state’s public schools.
Sponsors of both bills, however, have doubts about their chances and acknowledge ongoing talks about scaling back the proposals.
Since emergency pandemic benefits expired last year, kids of single parents making $37,000 a year or more must pay for school lunches while thousands of older adults living off Social Security rely on $40 of food stamps and free pantries every month.
Ruthel Sichtman, 78, of North Baltimore, said her monthly SNAP benefit last year dropped from $281 to $50.
“On $50, you can’t buy anything. You can’t buy any meat except the lowest quality of fish,” Sichtman said after a Taco Tuesday lunch service at Paul’s Place in Washington Village/Pigtown. “I bought catfish. $8 or something for a pack of fish I can cook three or four times so it can stretch out.”
SNAP is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the state’s human services department to around 700,000 Marylanders. The federal minimum monthly benefit is $23 and, since state legislation passed in 2022, Maryland pays around $3 million per year to cover the difference and provides a $40 minimum for households with a member 62 and over.
In February 2023, the expiration of emergency pandemic benefits launched in 2020 left recipients short an average of $82 per month, and some were hit much harder. Some families of four receiving $973 a month saw their monthly benefit shrink to less than $100 while some older adults living alone who were receiving $281 now receive $40.
Now the legislation, introduced in the Senate by Cory McCray, a Democrat from Northeast Baltimore, would increase the minimum SNAP monthly benefit to $95 for all recipients, not only those with a household member 62 and over.
“Inflation is going up. We all go to the supermarket; we know the cost. Pandemic SNAP was a huge benefit, and after those resources got reduced, I was inundated with calls, especially from seniors, asking, ‘How do you expect us to survive?’” McCray said.
The bill would require an additional $48 million per year from the state’s general fund as 74,000 households would receive an average of $58 more per month, according to a legislative analysis.
The annual session of the Maryland General Assembly ends April 8. The state is on track to collect $255 million less than the most recent estimates for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, the Maryland Board of Revenue Estimates has said.
“All of us throughout the state have heard from constituents. It’s not one particular district. All throughout our state, hunger is a pervasive issue. I’m confident there is bipartisan support for improving our SNAP program,” said Del. Emily Shetty, a Montgomery County Democrat and sponsor of the House version of the SNAP bill. “The question is what can we afford?”
Shetty said she had discussed targeting the increase in SNAP benefits to a smaller group of people or lowering the monthly amount as ways to save money.
“We’re in a very difficult fiscal climate,” Shetty said. “We have to figure out how much do we help. Do we target it to different populations? If we include everybody, how much could that benefit be?”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, grocery prices in the Baltimore area increased around 4% from January 2023 to December 2023. According to a Census Bureau survey released in February, 31.6% of Maryland adults said their children were sometimes or often not eating enough because food was not affordable.
Paul’s Place, a nonprofit that provides lunch Monday through Friday as well as case management, served over 36,000 meals in 2023, a 32% increase from 2022 while the Maryland Food Bank said 95% of its roughly 360 partners saw an immediate increase in demand when pandemic SNAP benefits expired.
“Some have said there is a hunger cliff, and we’re slowly falling off it, but the reality is we’ve fallen off. We fell off last year with the end of emergency pandemic allotments,” said JD Douglas-Robison, a senior associate for SNAP at advocacy group Maryland Hunger Solutions. “The minimum that we’re getting is not enough, we need to do more to support them to buy the food they want to eat.”
Free school meals
HB 696/Senate Bill 579 would prohibit school districts from charging students for school meals. In 2018, the Maryland Cares for Kids Act eliminated reduced-priced meals in the state.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture supplemented free school meals for all students during the pandemic. In recent years eight states, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont, have passed similar legislation, according to The Associated Press.
A similar bill failed in last year’s session.
“Hungry kids can’t wait another year for this bill to come back around,” Julia Gross, an associate at Maryland Hunger Solutions, said.
Currently for a family of four with two children, the income cut-off for free school meals is $55,500.
Schools and districts where 40% of students qualify for free school meals, such as Baltimore City, can apply for a community eligibility provision to provide free meals to all students.
Jaime Hetzler, Baltimore County Public Schools director of food and nutrition services, said the district offered free meals at 87 schools last year, and this year is offering free meals at all 169 schools. This school year, the district has served 32% more breakfasts and 21% more lunches.
“Five years ago we had an entire room in the central office of 10 to 15 temps that would work for six months just to process all the paperwork,” Hetzler said. “It’s a lot of time and energy to handle cash and handle free meal applications and track debt for kids who didn’t bring money and all that red tape that isn’t about feeding the kids.”
The bill would cost Maryland’s general fund an additional $180 million per year, according to a legislative analysis.
Gov. Wes Moore is asking for a $500 million increase in the state’s education budget in 2025 to bring total K-12 public school funding to $9.2 billion. The state is projected to have a $761 million deficit in the budget that begins July 1, growing to $2.7 billion four years later.
“Hungry kids aren’t going to learn well. If we’re making all these investments in our schools, this is to going to make sure those investments aren’t in hungry kids,” said Del. Julie Palakovich Carr, a Montgomery County Democrat and sponsor of the House version of the bill.
Palakovich Carr said she has had discussions about targeting free school meals at specific schools or districts.
“There is a big appetite to do something. The fiscal note is the big challenge.”
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