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Sign on to the CFPA 2002 Legislative Agenda and show your support!

Please check the items that you support below.  (There is a check box at the bottom if you support all of the items.)

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 Giving Kids a Healthy Start: Improving Child Nutrition

California Food Policy Advocates proposes an initiative to help California’s school children get off to a healthy start in life.

Feeding Hungry Minds in Low-Performing Schools

        All children should start the day with a healthy breakfast; a hungry child cannot learn. Yet, over 450 schools in California with large numbers of low-income children do not serve breakfast.  As a first step toward breakfast for all of California’s school children, CFPA proposes to focus on our lowest performing schools as identified by the School Accountability Act of 1999.  Recognizing the essential role of good nutrition in educational success, these low-performing schools have a special responsibility to their students to serve breakfast.

Action: Legislation that requires low performing schools to serve school breakfast.

 The Red Tape Reduction Act for Hungry, Working Californians: Five Key Measures to Improve the Food Stamp Program  

        Over 71% of the households eligible for food stamps in California are working households.  Yet, most of these working Californians are not getting the support that food stamps provide.  Red tape in the Food Stamp Program makes it difficult for people to work and to get help putting food on the table. CFPA proposes The Red Tape Reduction Act for Hungry, Working Californians to reduce these hassles.  The bill would contain the following 5 improvements:

1. Remove Redundant Red Tape: End Monthly Reporting 
        Food Stamp recipients are buried in paperwork. Each month food stamps recipients must submit a report on their earnings, assets and other factors in order to continue receiving benefits – even if none of these factors have changed. California is just one of eight states that still require monthly reporting.

Action: Legislation to end monthly reporting for food stamp recipients and for CalWORKs recipients (since 65% of food stamp recipients also receive CalWORKs) in California and require the state to choose another reporting option.

2. Supporting Welfare-to-Work: Transitional Benefits for Welfare Leavers 
        Only one in five people leaving welfare in California continues to receive food stamps. Yet, food stamps are an essential work support. They are critical to the welfare-to-work transition. The federal government allows states to provide welfare leavers with up to six months of transitional food stamps.

Action: Legislation to establish food stamps as a transitional benefit for welfare leavers.

3. Fast Lane to Food Assistance: Connecting Medi-Cal recipients to Food Stamps
        Good nutrition is a cornerstone of good health, yet only half the low-income families enrolled in Medi-Cal get food stamps. One way for California to get a better return on its healthcare investment is to conduct targeted, low-cost food stamp outreach to MediCal recipients. In addition to repositioning the Food Stamp Program as a nutrition program linked to health care, this outreach would also eliminate some of the inconsistencies in income and asset limits between the two programs that currently prevent many MediCal recipients from getting food stamps.

Action: The act would require that all MediCal recipients receive a TANF (welfare) funded outreach flyer, which would enable California to eliminate the incompatible food stamp income and asset tests that prevent many MediCal recipients from getting food stamps.

4. County Options for Working Californians
        While many working Californians are eligible for food stamps, many do not participate simply because their employment responsibilities make it difficult to apply. For example, it takes over 5 hours and 3 trips to the food stamp office to get help. How many working folks can afford to miss that much work? As food stamps are county-administered in California, counties have a responsibility to improve access to food stamps for working families.

Action: Legislation to require counties to choose from a list of local options to improve access. All counties in California would be required to report annually on which one of the following options it has chosen to implement:
Open food stamp offices for at least five non-traditional hours each week (either evenings or weekends).
Increase out-stationing of county workers available to accept food stamp applications by 5 sites.
Exempt food stamp applicants from the face-to-face interview by making existing exemption options standard practice.

5. Protecting California’s Workers in High Unemployment Areas 
        Non-disabled single adults, aged 18-50 (ABAWDS), are generally eligible to receive food stamp for just 3 months out a 36-month period. If they are able to meet established work requirements, ABAWDS can continue to get help for longer than three months. In many counties, however, opportunities for meeting the work requirements are scarce. To protect workers in these high unemployment areas, Congress has created a waiver system that allows states to continue benefits to ABAWDs in areas designated by the federal government as Labor Surplus Areas. California has not pursued these waivers, even in the face of an economic slowdown and high unemployment in many areas of the state.

Action: Legislation to request and implement Labor Surplus Waivers for all federally established Labor Surplus Areas in California.

Make Food Stamps Work for Working Californians: Allow Hungry Folks to Own Reliable Cars
    Food stamps increasingly serve as an essential nutrition support for low-wage working families, who must depend upon reliable cars to get to work. A key barrier to food stamp participation is our state’s car rule that can disqualify folks if the value of their car exceeds $4,650. These people face a difficult choice: Give up the car needed for work or go hungry. If we want food stamps to work for working Californians, they have to be able to get to work AND put food on the table.

Action: Budget item to allow California to do what most other states are already doing: let working folks keep the car they need to keep their jobs and keep food stamps, too, so they can feed their families.

I support all of the items above!

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