Kansas is facing the loss of more than $10 million in federal funding for food assistance after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rejected the state’s plan to comply with new data-sharing rules.
Why It Matters
The USDA which manages the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), announced in May that states would be required to share benefit recipient data—including names, birth dates, addresses, and social security numbers—under an executive order from President Donald Trump expanding data sharing between federal and state programs.
According to the USDA, the goal of the data collection is to help root out fraud in the program, which serves around 42 million people nationwide and some 188,000 in Kansas. But the move has been met with stiff opposition: numerous states entered a lawsuit to stop the data collection, citing risks to beneficiary privacy and concerns it could be used to help aid immigration enforcement.
While Kansas was not a part of that lawsuit, the state’s Department for Children and Families (DCF) and Democratic Governor Laura Kelly have refused to provide the information over similar concerns about how the data could be shared and the burden it places on state resources to compile and deliver the information. The USDA’s demand covers more than 730,000 Kansans in households that applied for or received benefits in the past five years.
What To Know
The USDA set a September 19 deadline for compliance with the order and warned Kansas it could lose $10.4 million in quarterly administrative funding for the SNAP if it failed to provide. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach also filed a lawsuit earlier this month to compel state agencies to release the information.
According to a report by the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Kansas DCF submitted a corrective action plan by the deadline. The five-phase proposal outlined a gradual approach to providing the information while keeping within state and federal privacy laws.
Despite that, the USDA ruled the plan unacceptable. On September 20, the agency sent a formal notice of disallowance, which was released by Kobach. In the letter, USDA Deputy Undersecretary Patrick Penn wrote that Kansas had failed “to comply with requirements to provide SNAP enrollment data” and said the department “has not received an acceptable corrective action plan proposal or any SNAP enrollment data.”
While the USDA has moved to block the funding, the cut is not immediate. Kansas officials say they will appeal, a process that puts the disallowance on hold for now. That means the state can continue receiving federal money until the dispute is resolved.
“We will, of course, appeal the decision and continue to protect the security of Kansans’ private data,” Kelly’s chief of staff Will Lawrence told Newsweek.
What People Are Saying
Kansas Governor’s Office chief of staff Will Lawrence said in an email to Newsweek: “The attorney general continues to have a complicated relationship with the facts and the truth in an effort to score political points by misleading thousands of Kansans.”
Kris Kobach, the Kansas attorney general, said in a statement emailed to Newsweek following the USDA withholding of funds: “We warned that this would happen when we filed the lawsuit on behalf of all Kansans against the governor. She is required by Kansas law to provide this basic information to the USDA. Now low-income Kansas families won’t be able to put food on the table because of her political defiance.
“The governor seems to be blinded by her political ideology. She is flagrantly violating Kansas law, and she is hurting needy Kansans in the process.”
USDA Deputy Undersecretary Patrick Penn: “The complete transmission of the required SNAP enrollment data is imperative to ensure FNS [the Food and Nutrition Service] and the state agency have full insight into SNAP program integrity. In the absence of data, FNS and the Department of Children and Families lack key information necessary to ensure effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
What Happens Next
Lawrence said that for the time being, SNAP funding will not be impacted: “The filing of an appeal will automatically stay the disallowance of funds, meaning the SNAP program will continue to operate normally as the appeals process unfolds.”
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