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Food banks, hunger advocates tell committee HB730 could interrupt benefits and increase demand on charities
Summary
Representatives from the Idaho Food Bank, The Hunger Coalition, and local providers testified that HB730's added verification steps could delay access to SNAP and push families to food banks that cannot absorb sudden demand.
Randy Ford, president and CEO of the Idaho Food Bank, told the committee that Idaho has "one of the best administered SNAP programs in the nation" and warned that HB730's added verification layers "will import solutions designed for high error rate states" to a state that currently reports low error rates. He said food banks cannot absorb lapses in SNAP benefits and that his organization serves more than 216,000 individuals monthly.
Jessica Molina of The Hunger Coalition and Kendra Knighton of the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy echoed concerns that additional certification cycles and data checks would increase case touches, create delays for participants, and raise the chance of mistakes. Molina emphasized that local case managers already spend substantial time helping applicants and that any added process would disproportionately affect rural access.
