Bipartisan APHSA Issues Rare, Unanimous Statement of Support for Staff Flexibility as a priority in the Farm Bill
Forty-seven states are failing to meet Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) processing standards. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has sent warning letters to 32 states and two territories for being woefully behind in processing the benefit applications. Starving families are waiting far too long to get the help they need and are owed. The status quo is unacceptable.
That’s why CAMI supports H.R. 5094 (SNAP Staffing Flexibility Act) sponsored by Rep. Don Bacon and five other members of Congress as a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill. Now, the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) is also endorsing SNAP staffing flexibility.
Listen to CAMI’s podcast on the SNAP State of Play HERE.
For years, CAMI has been calling for common sense reforms to SNAP to ensure Americans who are struggling to put food on the table can receive help in their time of need. This has included a persistent call for Congress to take action to give states flexibility in administering the food stamp, or SNAP.
APHSA joins that call, writing in a letter to the House Committee on Agriculture, “APHSA continues to support offering states greater flexibility to use non-merit, contract staff to perform necessary eligibility and certification functions in SNAP.”
The letter goes on to state, “Across the country, state and local agencies continue to struggle to hire, train, and retain staff at a pace that is necessary to meet and sustain federal requirements around application processing timeliness…This flexibility for the use of non-merit staff will provide crucial capacity to states at critical times when support is needed.”
CAMI agrees that this is the only no-cost solution to widespread application backlogs and high error rates in SNAP programs nationwide. It’s why we need flexibility across the country in hiring workforce to process food stamp applications more efficiently.
