Food banks across Texas are raising the alarm over a federal policy change that could force the state to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for food assistance benefits or risk leaving millions of Texans without access to food.

Local Impact

The San Antonio Food Bank currently serves around 140,000 people every week — a number that has continued to climb year over year. The food bank’s CEO, Eric Cooper, said the stakes couldn’t be higher. “When you think about the San Antonio Food Bank, for every one meal we put out, SNAP provides nine,” Cooper said. “Should we see an increase in the number of families, we just won’t have the food supply to meet that need.”

Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks, explained that the error rate triggering these new costs is widely misunderstood. “The most important thing to know about the payment error rate is that it is not fraud,” Cole said. “It is a measure of accuracy.”

Consequences

If Texas cannot or will not fund its share of SNAP costs, Cole warned the consequences would be severe. “If they walk away from the program, what that’s going to mean is 3 million Texans without access to reliable food,” Cole said. “Our food bank network won’t be able to make up for that gap.”

Original reporting: San Antonio, TX News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.