By Regina Medina
Gov. Tim Walz announced today $4 million in emergency state funding for Minnesota’s food shelves as the federal shutdown continues.
The new funding comes as the federal government shutdown threatens to halt grocery benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program come Nov. 1.
The state faces a $73 million federal funding gap in its nutritional safety net.
Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, said the funding will provide relief for 440,000 Minnesotans who receive SNAP benefits and Minnesota Family Investment Program grocery benefits.
The state is working with The Open Door, Brown said, to distribute base funding of about $5,000 to over 300 food shelves and tribal nations statewide.
“Then we will add in additional funding when we look at a heat map … of SNAP participation and food shelf participation to help reallocate the remaining funds,” she said. That approach is the “quickest way to get funds as close as possible to the Minnesotans who will be impacted by this federal shutdown.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told the state last week that any money used to continue November benefits would not be reimbursed by the federal government.
“I want to be very clear; USDA, during this shutdown, has contingency funds that they could release just like us. They are choosing not to,” Walz said. He said 38 percent of SNAP recipients are children and 18 percent are seniors.
Gov. Walz called the one-time funding a “bridge.”
“As this continues to go on, it will become much more of a crisis. And it may not feel like a crisis to some folks, if you’re not depending on all these different services, but it will eventually all start to come home,” he said.
State to send $4 million to food shelves as shutdown threatens SNAP ai…
