State Gets Waivers To Slow Cutoff Of Food Stamps Spokane County Doesn’t Qualify; If All Waivers Granted, 30,000 Of State’s 38,000 Recipients Will Still Get Benefits

Many of the 38,000 people in Washington who were about to lose their food stamps will get them for one more year under waivers obtained by the state.

But not in Spokane County.

Counties where unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent have been granted waivers from a federal welfare reform law that chops off benefits in three months for some recipients.

Those counties include Ferry, Okanogan and Pend Oreille.

Waivers are also under review in counties where jobs are in short supply, including Douglas and Lincoln.

If the waivers are approved, all but 7,600 of the 38,000 food stamp recipients targeted to be cut off will continue to receive benefits.

Spokane County does not qualify for either type of waiver, even though Spokane’s 3rd Legislative District is the state’s heaviest user of welfare benefits.

Under the new federal law, able-bodied, single people without children between 18 and 50 years old may only receive food stamps for three months every three years.

There are about 38,000 such food stamp recipients in Washington and about 1 million nationwide.

The cutoff doesn’t go into effect if the recipient works 20 hours a week or is in a community service program that repays the value of their food stamps.

The law also allowed states to continue providing benefits in areas where jobs are harder to find. The law recognized that in some places, it is not realistic to expect unemployed people to find work within three months.

“Cutting off benefits to people in Pend Oreille County in the middle of January doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Jerry Friedman of the state Department of Social and Health Services.

Waivers are being granted around the country, from hardscrabble rural communities to entire cities, including Newark, Trenton and Camden in New Jersey. Illinois wants a waiver for the entire city of Chicago.

Idaho hasn’t applied for exemptions, but isn’t ruling them out, said David Ensunsa, state Health and Welfare Department spokesman. The issue is being studied, he said.

The waivers are intended to prevent people from going hungry while they are unemployed.

Food stamp benefits also pump federal money into the local economy.

“Food stamps serve as a buffer for communities going through hard times,” said Linda Stone of Spokane, state chairman of the Anti-hunger and Nutrition Coalition.

“Food stamps not only keep food in people’s stomach, but keep grocery stores open.”

The waiver is only good for one year. If people targeted for cutoff aren’t working by then, they’ll be hungry.

“This is a group of people we should be concerned about,” Friedman said.

“People don’t think of them as the most disadvantaged. But many are street people, or they have learning disabilities or mental retardation.” Many are also hobbled by drug and alcohol abuse.

Generally, they are among the poorest of the poor. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., more than 40 percent of the people targeted for food stamp cutoffs nationwide are women with an average income of only 28 percent of the poverty line, or $170 a month.

Food stamps are the only benefit they receive because they don’t have kids and are too healthy and young for any other type of assistance.

Food stamps are issued monthly and can only be used for food. They cannot be used to buy alcohol, cigarettes, non-food items like paper products or cleaners, or restaurant meals.

The typical food stamp recipient receives help worth 97 cents per meal.

Because communities across the country are applying for waivers, budget savings predicted from the welfare reform law are already way off target.

If all the waivers applied for are granted, it could reduce the federal budget savings expected from the welfare reform law by as much as $2 billion. The law had been expected to save taxpayers $5.1 billion over the next six years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. , DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WAIVERS OK’d Washington state counties with approved waivers because their rate of unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent include: Adams, Chelan, Columbia, Ferry, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Klickitat, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Skamania and Yakima. Counties with waivers pending because insufficient jobs are available include: Asotin, Benton, Clallam, Cowlitz, Douglas, Garfield, Island, Jefferson, parts of King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Lewis, Lincoln, Mason, Pacific, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish, Stevens, Wahkiakum, Walla Walla, Whatcom and Whitman. The three counties that don’t meet requirements for a waiver under either category include: Spokane, Clark and Thurston.

Source: State Department of Social and Health Services.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Lynda V. Mapes Staff writer The New York Times News Service contributed to this story.