In Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder, having just hoisted a body from a grave says “What a filthy job.” Marty Feldman replies, “Could be worse,” to which Wilder asks, “How?” Feldman notes, “Could be raining.” And, of course, it then starts to rain.

Well, here in Missouri it’s raining on those who ought to get food stamps.

The state Department of Social Services is not issuing the 160+ page Monthly Management Reports for the Family Support Division and Medical Services due to issues with the MO HealthNet/Medicaid program. Folks in DSS research are sharing the SNAP numbers with me.

They are not pretty: From July 2013 to July 2014 a total of 89,768 people have left the food stamp rolls – a drop of 9.8 percent in one year.

That would be good news if Missouri had a booming economy with tens of thousands of new, middle class jobs being created each year. As we all know, we don’t.

Across the nation food stamp state totals have been trending down around 3 to 4 percent a year. I am convinced that Missouri’s “extra 5 percent” in recipient drop is due to the fumbled implementation of the reorganization of the Family Support Division. I have talked to pantry folk who routinely hear from families who have waited two and three months for a routine reauthorization of the food stamp account. Many pantry customers talk of lost documents, the inability to talk to a person who knows their case when they call, and, general confusion in the system.

The major changes in the way food stamp cases are handled began last summer here in the St. Louis area. The decline in the participant total from July 2012 to July 2013 was 20,053 people – 2 percent of the caseload. If we had the same decline percentage from 2013 to 2014 we would have 70,000 more Missourians receiving food stamps, adding $8.4 million a month to the state’s economy.

In July 2014 the average benefit was $120.18 per person–$1.29 per person per meal. Statewide, $99,628,234 in benefits were issued.

Of course, people who ought to get food stamps but don’t receive them are not starving to death in the streets. They are filling food pantry lobbies and building nutritional debts which their bodies will pay later.

Food stamps in Ferguson

The state folks also shared the total number of food stamp recipients in a number of north St. Louis County Zip Codes. While post office boundaries don’t directly follow city limits, the food stamp numbers were extremely interesting:63135 (downtown Ferguson and some surrounding smaller municipalities): 2,413 recipients

• 63136 (the W. Florissant apartment area of Ferguson & Jennings): 8,035 recipients
• 63135 (downtown Ferguson and some surrounding smaller municipalities): 2,413 recipient
• For comparison, 63130 (most of University City): 2,041 recipients.

Remember that Missouri has better than a handful of northern counties with fewer than 8,000 residents: the concentration of struggling families in one zip code is scary.

The 2009 conundrum

The other month I shared data from the Food Research and Action Center, which, using numbers from USDA, showed that Missouri was the only state in the nation to show a decline in food stamp recipients from 2009 to 2014.

People in certain buildings in Jefferson City were not amused.

The Department of Social Services admitted in late 2009 that Missouri overcounted the number of food stamp recipients. Basically, the different computer systems didn’t listen to each other. While new people were added to the rolls, those within families who should have been removed (moved out of the home, etc.) weren’t. The problem apparently went on for several – perhaps seven – years.

For example, in April 2009 Missouri claimed it had 1,041,077 food stamp recipients, and that is the number FRAC cited this summer. Now the state says the correct total for April 2009 was around 800,000 recipients. They note that USDA has changed some (but not all) published numbers from Missouri for 2009 and the “whoops” era.

The problem appears to have been fixed by the end of 2009: the January 2010 food stamp total was 894,418 people compared to 1,119,067 in September 2009 despite the rapid increase in folks getting help due to the recession.
Now we need to back-up a step. The data FRAC used is from USDA reports on what the federal government paid Missouri for the food stamps issued. In other words, even if the correct number was 800,000 Washington gave Missouri money for a million people. The families getting the bonus money had no way of knowing they were getting too generous benefits. (A more important yet unanswered question is did Missouri ever pay that money back?)

So, what number should be used?

Despite the state’s protestations, evidence shows that Missouri issued benefits to 1,041,077 people in April 2009. If the benefits were issued – even in error – they went to families and the stamps went through cash registers all about the state.

My files from back then show the average benefit was $1.09 per person per meal. (By the way, April 2009 is when benefits soared due to the recovery act’s bonus payments. In March 2009 the average benefit was 93 cents per person per meal.)

In other words, the overpayments probably didn’t allow families to buy steak and lobster. They just made their lives a bit easier. I can live with that.

A quick swipe at Fox News

The GAO recently issued a report on errors in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The headline: Payment Errors and Trafficking Have Declined, but Challenges Remain. The report put the fraud rate at 1 percent of benefits issued and included a chart documenting dramatic improvements since 1999 in case accuracy.

Fox News, of course, headlined their story “Food Stamp Fraud Rampant: GAO Report.”.

I expect their lead story tomorrow to be, “Despite Obama, the Sun Rose This Morning.”

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In a move that demonstrates a small—and too rare—step toward common sense in lawmaking, Missouri has rescinded [mostly] an 18-year-old law that banned people with felony drug convictions from ever receiving food stamps under the SNAP program. The new law is not a “get-out-of-jail-free,” though. It retains a one-year waiting period following a drug felon’s release from custody, and a third drug felony conviction would still trigger a lifetime ban. But those convicted of one or two drug felonies would be able to get food stamps under the SNAP program after a year, provided that they adhere to court orders regarding drug treatment programs.

The problem with the lifetime ban, argued proponents of the new, more humane approach, is that:

It turned safety net programs into a weapon in the drug war, adding a socioeconomic penalty to the criminal penalties the system imposes for drug crimes.

That approach fails to account for the realities of life in poverty, The Sentencing Project’s Director of Advocacy Nicole Porter said. “There has been a move to modify the ban ever since the 1990s in recognition that it was unfair to people who had already completed their sentence and were living in the community to deny them the ability to participate in the social safety net.” But “poor assumptions about people with prior convictions” have guided lawmakers in the handful of holdout states. The bans are “one way that people who are opposed to the safety net at all have been able to narrow the net and to marginalize people,” she said.

Relaxing the lifetime ban is a nod to the growing evidence that the war on drugs isn’t working. It also demonstrates that punishing poor people doesn’t help, either.

Calling the ban a “lifetime sentence,” The Sentencing Project notes that, when the national law—which gave states the ability to opt in or out—was enacted by Congress in 1996—with very little debate—the ban was intended to show that Congressional representatives were “tough on crime.”

As Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), the sponsor of the amendment, argued, “If we are serious about our drug laws, we ought not to give people welfare benefits who are violating the Nation’s drug laws.”

Conspicuously absent from the brief debate over this provision was any discussion of whether the lifetime ban for individuals with felony drug offenses would advance the general objectives of welfare reform.

During this year’s Missouri hearings on the bill to lift the ban, people with prior drug convictions testified that the food-stamp ban has made it harder for people to climb out of poverty. Some also questioned its fairness, noting that the ban did not apply to convicted murders or sex offenders who are released from prison.

The old law resulted in some ludicrous situations, Think Progress reports:

Johnny Waller, who served five years decades ago for selling marijuana as a teenager, said, “I can go buy a firearm but I can’t get assistance to buy a sandwich

As is so often the case, Missouri is late to this remediating effort. Until Missouri Governor Nixon signed the new bill into law in June 2014, Missouri was one of nine states holding out for the punitive lifetime ban (Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming). The bans were imposed as part of welfare reform under President Clinton, but over the 18 years since they have been repealed in 16 states and modified in various ways by another 25.

The sponsor of the new law in Missouri, Sen. Kiki Curls, D-Kansas City, said food assistance would reduce the chances that a person with a drug problem would relapse and return to prison. “I think it gives folks an opportunity to succeed.”

Not much encouraging comes out of the Republican-dominated Missouri state legislature these days, so this development is refreshing. I doubt that this law passed for purely humanitarian reasons. I’m guessing that legislators just decided that Missouri shouldn’t be—once again—left behind and viewed as a backward state—that’s not good for business, after all. But whatever the reason, this is a small step in a better direction. And in Missouri, that’s newsworthy.

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