January 15, 2020

Hungry times

In case you missed it, here's a great New York Times article about the impact of restrictions on SNAP food assistance in West Virginia. It actually features my hometown, along with the great work of a friend and comrade with the WV Center on Budget and Policy's Seth DiStefano.

Beginning in 2016, the state imposed work reporting requirements on the nine counties with the best employment outlook...and the result was disaster, with over 5,400 people being cut off. As a result of bad legislation passed last year, that failed policy is going statewide.

Now, thanks to a certain presidential administration, that bad idea is about to be nationalized, as I wrote in this blog post for the national AFSC.

Yesterday, WV Governor Jim Justice proclaimed "Hunger Free West Virginia Day." While we're hoping to make some progress in that arena, I wanted to scream that the job would be a lot easier if WV hadn't messed with SNAP to start with.