DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries remain in limbo as the federal government shutdown continues.
Federal officials announced Monday that they will release partial funding for the food assistance program. However, it is still unclear how much money Coloradans will receive or when the funding will be distributed.
To fill this gap, some provincial governments are taking matters into their own hands.
Summit County commissioners plan to vote Tuesday on a proposal to spend more than $100,000 on grocery store gift cards for their 1,400 residents who rely on SNAP benefits. This represents approximately 45% of what the federal government typically distributes to the province each month.
“Even if the federal government releases the money within the next couple of days, it will take the state a certain amount of time to load that money locally onto people’s cards,” Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pugh said. “Certainly, over the next couple of weeks, it will not be business as usual for a lot of these families.”
If approved, SNAP recipients with proof of eligibility can begin receiving gift cards as early as Wednesday.
“There is no other income available to many of these families from month to month,” Pugh said. “It’s a choice between having money to eat and not having money to eat.”
A similar plan is underway in Pitkin County, where officials are preparing to distribute $67,000 in food aid this month to about 235 families. The county is also funding additional supplies for a local food pantry, in hopes of helping people who work in the county but live elsewhere.
“Where we were stocking one or two days the week before, we might be stocking three to four days a week,” Pitkin County Human Services Director Lindsay Maisch said.
Pitkin and Summit are preparing to cover the SNAP gap for next month
Both Pitkin and Summit counties say their programs will end once federal funding is restored, but they are prepared to cover the gap for at least the next month.
“When you have more than 330 people in your county — a small county like ours — who may not have money to eat, it’s a mass care issue,” she said.
Maisch and Pugh say the only reason the two counties are able to distribute this money is because the demand for SNAP in those areas is relatively small.
But in larger districts, including Boulder and Denver, spokespeople say they don’t have the budget capacity to do the same. Monthly SNAP distributions to those counties run into the millions of dollars.
Both Summit leaders and Pitkin said they do not expect to be reimbursed for their food aid costs once the federal government reopens.