jonetta rose barras: Oh SNAP, it’s temporary

Many people — myself included — supported the DC Council’s recent move toward filing a lawsuit against Mayor Muriel Bowser for her unwillingness to follow the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Support Act, which mandated that a portion of any surplus funds from 2023 would be spent to implement the Give SNAP a Raise Act of 2022. That local law called for a temporary benefit increase to about 83,000 households that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (previously known as food stamps). 

My endorsement of the legislature’s proposed litigation was for reasons other than those voiced by proponents of the funding measure. For me, it’s critical that the District’s legislative branch serves as a strong and unwavering counterbalance or check to the executive. For many years, the council has shirked that duty.

Bowser has routinely presented herself as omnipotent — able to take what she wants and do what she wants, when she wants. Consider the fact that from 2020 to 2022, she repeatedly violated the law, defying orders by the Contract Appeals Board (CAB) related to her administration’s handling of the multibillion-dollar Medicaid managed care procurement. The CAB had ruled that the executive had violated the city’s procurement rules and regulations. In that saga of the mayor as chief government rogue, the council — under the leadership of Chair Phil Mendelson — cast itself as enabler, constantly asserting that it lacked the power to stop her illegal behaviors.

This time around, however, legislators seem to have found the necessary fortitude to step up to Bowser. After they announced their intention to fight, she did what most bullies do: She backed down. Eligible residents next month will begin receiving additional benefits that will be retroactive to January 2024.

That said, the mayor-council SNAP skirmish is more complicated than a single encounter or a single subsidy program.

It shines a light on a trifecta of questions and concerns: How do we halt the all-too-familiar politicians’ game of using the poor as pawns in political contests? Is providing one temporary subsidy after another the most effective approach to ensure that fragile families achieve some modicum of financial stability and vibrancy? Now that the federal government has deliberately turned off the funding spigot it opened during the three-year pandemic, can DC really fill the gap even as the city’s chief financial officer makes clear that tax revenue is getting tighter, exacerbated by the shuttering of a variety of businesses and an avalanche of empty office buildings? 

These may seem like separate, distinct issues. They are not. They interlock. 

Laura Green Zeilinger, who manages the city’s social services programs as director of the DC Department of Human Services, cited a series of budget and programming pressures such as increasing operational costs for homeless shelters and the adverse effect of inflation on the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program. ”These are mandatory programs that currently are not fully funded due to the high level of needs,” she told me earlier this week. 

“We cannot sustain with local funds the federal increases that were available during COVID,” Zeilinger added during an informational interview I requested.

She noted that unspent money from the previous year is typically used to finance a supplemental budget for the current fiscal year. The council preempted that process by sweeping surplus funds even before they became available and identifying them for a local supplement to federal SNAP benefits.

“There are things we want to do [but] don’t have the funds to do,” said Zeilinger. 

Once upon a time, even before the pandemic and the accompanying influx of federal funds, the city was swimming in green. DC’s economy was healthy enough that the problems Zeilinger mentioned could be addressed, at least partially. Now, not so much. 

If the District wants to better serve its poor and working class, it needs a smarter, more holistic delivery model. Interestingly, DHS already has one, albeit a pilot.

The Career Mobility Action Plan (Career MAP) is a five-year, multi-generational pilot program involving 600 families who have a history of homelessness and who receive multiple benefits or subsidies from the government. The aim is to help them secure specific resources, including employment, so that they can “earn their way out of poverty,” despite the obstacles often created by eligibility requirements mandated by federal social service programs.

“We are super excited about this program,” added Zeilinger. 

Instead of fighting over a one-time infusion for a short-term benefit, should the city instead consider expanding or replicating Career MAP? That kind of effort doesn’t well serve political interests, however, which often seem to take priority over sound public policy and program development. 

Introduced by at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson — and co-introduced by Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau, Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto, then-Ward 3 representative Mary Cheh, Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George, then-Ward 5’s Kenyan McDuffie, and at-large member Robert White — the SNAP increase legislation has become yet another example of the decades-old game of using the poor as political pawns. Claiming to be looking out for vulnerable residents is a marketable headline during a local election — a context in which most politicians pit the poor against the wealthy, even in an ultra-liberal town like DC. 

The council’s first irresponsible action was approving the SNAP legislation without appropriating sufficient funds for its implementation — unfortunately standard practice for our legislature. Then, councilmembers decided to tap an invisible budget surplus, with neither regard for the state of the economy nor a full understanding of the state of the city’s social service programs. The fact that the funds ended up materializing doesn’t cure the original misjudgment. Remarkably, legislators boasted that they were addressing food insecurity even while knowingly approving funds for only one year — actually just nine months.

The quintessential question is this: What happens after September when the temporary program approved and financed with an unpredictable revenue stream runs out of funds?

Further, when that time comes, how are families who have come to rely on that temporary allotment going to fill the gap?

Does anyone care, really?  

Those questions won’t be answered by any councilmember. The resolution of the problems caused by an ill-conceived budget and policy program will become Zeilinger’s responsibility. 

When councilmembers first introduced the legislation in 2022, Nadeau and Ward 6’s Charles Allen — the latter a co-sponsor of the bill — were running for reelection. McDuffie was seeking to become the next elected attorney general before making an election-year pivot after his qualifications were challenged; he ran instead for an at-large seat in the legislature. Mendelson faced an aggressive, agile and smart opponent. White was running to unseat Bowser.

During a recent press conference, the mayor was asked why she signed the bill permitting the SNAP increase to take effect with the surplus funds. “It wasn’t something I should have agreed to. And I won’t in the future,” Bowser said, expressing concerns about the legislature’s practice of laying claim to funds before they materialize for items or programs where priorities may have changed.

What the mayor didn’t admit was that she also may have been moved by politics — attempting to secure votes in low-income communities where she was weak. 

When Lewis George came along in 2023 and proposed claiming the surplus, she knew she would be running for reelection this year. “I introduced the budget amendment that funded this SNAP expansion because no child, adult, family or senior citizen in the District deserves to go hungry,” she wrote in an email newsletter to constituents.

Who would disagree with that? No one!

The fundamental issue isn’t motivation. It’s whether the jerry-rigged, shortsighted policies and laws often proposed and passed by the council well serve the city, particularly poor and working-class residents.

There is indisputable evidence that the answer is no. I certainly cannot be persuaded that a nine-month temporary program will do anything much in the end other than cause more chaos for residents struggling to put food on the table.

This month and next, with a bevy of agency performance oversight hearings before the council, the budget process begins. Primary election season began in earnest last week when candidates picked up their nominating petitions.

You can bet the plight of “vulnerable residents” will be the chief topic of discussion, and more piecemeal, makeshift policies will be offered as solutions. Let’s hope that instead of violating the law or being directed by her personal political desires, Bowser will follow her pledge and just say no, refusing to sign ill-conceived budgets or policy proposals that have the potential of doing more harm than good. 

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jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.