USDA asked to restore $4.5M for food stamps, not EBT

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP), as well as the Fitial administration, asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restore $4.5 million in de-obligated funding to the CNMI but this time for actual food assistance to thousands of food stamp recipients, not for the electronic benefit transfer system that the Commonwealth has been unable to put in place for years.

The $4.5 million was awarded to the CNMI’s Nutrition Assistance Program from fiscal years 2006 to 2010 but has been de-obligated because the funds were not being used for its intended purpose, which is for an EBT.

Sablan wrote a Feb. 23 letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, asking that the $4.5 million be restored with the condition that the CNMI must use the money only for food benefits, and not for administrative costs.

“Whatever the reason that led to the de-obligation, let us not penalize those who are truly hungry and need our assistance. Restore whatever funds may have been de-obligated. Again, condition that the money must be used solely for benefits,” Sablan said in a two-page letter to Vilsack, a copy of which was released over the weekend.

Acting governor Eloy S. Inos separately said the same request to restore the $4.5 million is being worked on by Department of Community and Cultural Affairs Secretary Melvin Faisao. The administration’s request is to restore the $4.5 million for actual food stamp and EBT, said Inos.

Since the money was reserved for EBT, Inos said it won’t be readily made available for other programs. “Meaning, from EBT to the [food] voucher program. It has to go through a process of consultation with FNS [Food and Nutrition Service]. And that, as I understand, is ongoing right now. Secretary Faisao [is working on it],” Inos said in an interview.

Also, Inos said that creating an EBT for the CNMI “requires a lot of discipline, including some complex point of sales system, inventory system, computerized communication link and so forth.”

“Add to that complication the fact that the CNMI is a hybrid system; 25 percent of it has to go to local produce,” Inos added.

Sablan, in his letter to USDA’s Vilsack, said it is “difficult to comprehend” that $4.5 million has been available to the CNMI at a time when the islands have been “cutting benefits, denying and delaying payments to eligible beneficiaries, and cutting the hours of administrative staff, leaving long waits for service.”

The USDA-funded NAP is under DCCA, which administers the food stamp program locally.

Sablan asked Vilsack to consider that the de-obligation “might well have been avoided had the Northern Marianas been included in the national Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which remains in your authority to initiate.”

The delegate has been pushing for months for the CNMI’s inclusion in the national food stamp program or SNAP, believing that this will result in an “additional” $19 million to $24 million in food stamp benefits and total economic impact of $21.48 million to $42.96 million.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial met last week with FNS Administrator Audrey Rowe in Washington, D.C., emphasizing that the local government “is currently not in a position to undertake the [SNAP],” according to a press release from the administration.

The governor instead brought to FNS’ attention concerns about unemployed nonresidents, particularly what he described as illegal overstayers who give birth in the CNMI so that their children are U.S. citizens.

“In turn, the unemployed and out-of-status parent avails of food stamp benefits in the name of the newborn citizen child. While the governor believes that children should have access to nutrition, he is gravely concerned about increased reports of abuse of benefits, or what is known as ‘benefit trafficking’ by unemployed nonresident parents who are believed to be trading their child’s food stamp vouchers for cash or for products not allowed under the program’s guidelines,” the administration said.

Florida-based human rights activist and former Rota teacher Wendy Doromal has strongly criticized what Fitial has been telling federal officials in the nation’s capital.

Doromal said Fitial would deny some U.S. citizen children food stamps “based on who their parents are, or more specifically, based on the immigration status of their parents.”

“This is an attack on children, no matter how he attempts to spin it. It is blatantly racist. This proposal that the governor has asked the Food and Nutrition Services administrator to endorse is despicable and cruel no matter how he attempts to justify it. Could there be a worse violation of human rights than to propose the starvation of children?” Doromal asked.

Doromal said the U.S. government “must not allow discrimination against innocent U.S. citizen children at the NAP office.”

“It is time for federal officials to thoroughly investigate this CNMI office,” she added.