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Committee adopts A27 amendment, moves $4 million for food assistance into Children and Families bill
Summary
The House Ways and Means Committee adopted the A27 amendment to the Children and Families Finance Bill, reallocating $4 million to food assistance programs and making several technical statutory changes; the bill will be laid over and later merged with the health finance bill.
The House Ways and Means Committee on the motion of Representative West adopted the A27 amendment to the Children and Families Finance Bill, inserting $4,000,000 in food assistance allocations and several technical statutory changes.
The amendment, described by Representative West as primarily technical, adds language from the Myers food bill allocating $2,500,000 to food shelves, $500,000 to American Indian sovereignty food programs and $1,000,000 to food banks that participate in the key FAB program and have operating budgets of $100,000,000 or less. Representative West said the amendment also makes enactment-date changes, defines an “audit trail” at a department request, moves some rule-directed changes into statute to avoid rulemaking costs, and includes other minor wording corrections.
The committee adopted the A27 amendment by voice vote; members were asked to say “aye,” and the chair declared the motion adopted. No recorded no votes or roll-call tally were entered in the transcript. After adopting the amendment, the committee laid over the Children and Families bill for a subsequent vote; members said it will be merged later with the Health Finance Bill.
Representative Rearick said he reviewed three years of September audits for Hunger Solutions (which the transcript records as merged with The Food Group) and met twice with the organization, concluding it met his standards for nonprofit stewardship. Rearick said the group had reasonable salaries and adequate documentation, and said, “that’s why I gave them a gold star.” Representative Catizia Bouton complimented Chair West’s description of the amendment. Representative West also acknowledged technical assistance from the Department of Children, Youth and Families and Nathan Hopkins of nonpartisan staff for the audit-trail definition.
No formal second was recorded for the motion in the transcript. The committee proceeded to consider the Health Finance Bill and later moved to merge the two bills as separate articles for floor consideration.
