Committee advances bill to remove sponsor‑deeming from California’s state food program

Assemblymember Rodriguez urged the Senate Human Services Committee to advance AB 1049, a measure to remove the sponsor‑deeming rule from the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), arguing the change would let county eligibility workers assess eligible immigrant families based on their actual resources rather than the finances of distant or absent sponsors.

Supporters told the committee the current rule creates procedural hurdles and a chilling effect. Ezer Pimentuan of the Alameda County Community Food Bank said eligibility workers often ask for sponsor paperwork or apply the rule before screening for exemptions, and read: "There are challenges, especially with advocating with some eligibility workers, about which sponsor deeming exemption the client meets. It sometimes makes clients withdraw from the application process." Lena Silver of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County described a case in which a 70‑year‑old Mandarin monolingual client was denied because he could not obtain sponsor bank statements; she said county workers sometimes fail to assess for the indigence exemption.

Committee members acknowledged the tension between preventing fraud and removing unnecessary barriers. One member raised concerns about system abuse and said officials must balance accountability with access; county welfare officials said counties already screen income eligibility and that removing sponsor deeming from CFAP would reduce administrative burden while maintaining program integrity.

The committee recorded a motion to pass AB 1049 to the Appropriations Committee and put the bill on call. The committee did not resolve all roll‑call votes during initial consideration; later roll calls show the motion to pass AB 1049 to Appropriations was recorded and kept on call.

The next step: AB 1049 was moved to the Appropriations Committee for further consideration.