The roughly 68,000 Montgomery County residents who receive monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will not have their cards refilled with any money for their November allotment as part of the ongoing government shutdown.
On average, the recipients here receive $180 each month to help with the purchase of food. That amounts to about a $12 million per month reduction for grocery store revenue and other businesses that accept SNAP cards, according to Heather Bruskin, director of the county’s Office of Food Systems Resilience.
“We will see a snowballing affect” to the local economy, Bruskin said during a weekly media briefing that was led this week by Rich Madaleno, county administrative officer. He led the meeting while Executive Marc Elrich and Councilmember Will Jawando were on a business trip to China and Japan to try and bring new business to the county.
Montgomery County’s current budget includes $23.5 million for food services for the needy, Madaleno said. Much of those funds are distributed to nonprofit organizations and schools.
“We are approving money each day to provide them with the food. We have been doing this for years,” he said.
However, Madaleno emphasized that the county does not have the funds to “backfill” what the federal government will not pay out during the shutdown. He also said that the county does not have the capability add money to SNAP cards.
“We cannot step in for the federal government. We cannot supplant the SNAP benefits that will be lost,” he said.
The loss in SNAP benefits is occurring as food prices continue to rise, and many county residents have lost their jobs. “This has been a challenging year,” Madaleno said.
The Office of Food Systems Resilience lists on its website where food is being distributed throughout the county.
“More than 680,000 Marylanders – including 262,000 children – rely on SNAP to put food on the table,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in a news release. “Time is running out to prevent hundreds of thousands of Maryland families from losing access to food. We’re taking the Trump administration to court because Maryland’s children and families deserve better than a federal government that chooses to let them go hungry despite having the resources to help.”
Brown joined 22 other attorneys general and three governors in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Department Of Agriculture Tuesday for what they called the “unlawful” suspension of the SNAP program.
Federal SNAP benefits will end Nov. 1
