SmartTranscript of House Government Operations-2025-02-06-2:30PM

[Speaker 0 ]: Hi. We're live. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: Alright. Welcome back. Two thirty. Thursday afternoon. We are talking to representatives of Three Square ZT. We're having an awareness day, so we're just immersing ourselves as part of a continuation of introductions with various stakeholder organizations. We have several folks in the gallery. I guess we'll just go down the order as listed. And so first up, we have Eva Shep. Am I pronouncing that correctly? [Witness Eva Schectman ]: Oh, okay. There we go. Shechtung? [Chair Matthew Birong ]: I'm a Shechtung. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yep. [John Sales ]: How are [Chair Matthew Birong ]: you, Eva? [Witness Eva Schectman ]: I'm well. Thank you. How are you all? [Chair Matthew Birong ]: Just fine. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. [Witness Eva Schectman ]: Thank you. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: So, yeah, please proceed. [Witness Eva Schectman ]: If you if you want, I can just go ahead and start my testimony. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: That would be fabulous. [Witness Eva Schectman ]: Okay. Great. So thank you for having me here today. My name is Eva Schectman. I am a low income self employed resident of Montpelier, Vermont, And I've been serving on the board of Just Basics Incorporated, JBI, the organization that runs the Montpelier Food Pantry since twenty nineteen. I'm here to support Vermont Food Bank's five million dollar request in the fiscal year twenty six budget and specifically one point seventy five million in base funding for responsive readiness to ensure that Vermont Food Bank and partners are prepared when disaster strike Vermont communities, as well as three point twenty five million dollars to purchase and distribute food and support the network of community based meal sites and food shelves like the Montpelier food pantry. In July twenty twenty three, the Montpelier food pantry, located in the basement of the Trinity Methodist Church on Main Street in Montpelier, was flooded up to the rafters. Everything we had in the basement was gone. Food, refrigerators and freezers, shelving, office equipment and computers, you name it. I joined the crew of over fifty people who volunteered to muck out that basement after the floodwaters had receded. We knew we wouldn't be able to return to that location and immediately found ways to continue serving the community. That first week or two or two, we gathered, among other necessary things, coolers from community members and set up under tents at the volunteer hub on Main Street. On Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays from ten to twelve, ten AM to twelve PM, the same days of the week and hours of the day the pantry was open in the church basement. Everyday staff, all four of them, board members, and a bunch of dedicated and new volunteers set up and packed up afterwards the coolers for perishable cold frozen foods and boxes for non perishables. Community Harvest of Center Vermont graciously stored perishable food at their facility about five miles outside of town until we were ready to set up shop again where we could store these foodstuffs ourselves. We then moved to indoors to a classroom at the Center for Arts and Learning on Berry Street for a month or so, which was great for access and out of the weather. But again, no storage and everything had to be set up and packed away every day. After a month or so serving the community there, we moved to our current location, which is not ideal for a number of reasons, but more accessible than the church basement and a central location in town. In the city center building, access on East State Street in Montpelier. I just wanna add something I realized I hadn't put in the written testimony, which is that the Montpelier food pantry serves and has been serving twelve hundred people a month for the last, at least, the last three years and had been the numbers have been going up had been going up up two, three years ago, but it has leveled off at twelve hundred every month. Every step of the way, the food bank did what they could to support our efforts. We knew even before the twenty twenty four flood the high likelihood of more frequent flooding. As communities across the straight state know, we need to be ready to respond to the next flood before it hits. The food bank needs your support to help make that possible. I cannot emphasize enough how vitally important it will be to have this committee's support to approve the food bank's five million dollar budget request, one point seventy five million dollars in base funding for responsive readiness, and three point twenty five million dollars to purchase and distribute food across the state. Thank you again for having me here today. I appreciate your time. Thank you, [Vice Chair Lisa Hango ]: Eva. Is there anybody here who has any questions for her? Great. Well, thank you very much for sharing that with us. And then, well, our next witness, John Sales. [John Sales ]: If I defer to Ivy [Vice Chair Lisa Hango ]: Absolutely. That would be great. Ivy, is it Eda? Yes. Very nice to see you. Right. Welcome. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. Thank you, chair, and every committee member for the opportunity to testify. For the record, my name is Ivy Enoch. I live in Burlington, and I'm the SNAP policy and training lead at Hunger Free Vermont. We're a statewide nonprofit with a core role of providing training, technical assistance, and policy support, and federal nutrition programs to improve how they work for all of us in Vermont. When government programs function well and are tailored as much as possible to best serve those who need them the most, that makes a positive difference in our communities. That's why we're here with our partners and neighbors for Three Spores Vermont Awareness Day to make sure this committee in particular has an overview of Three Spores Vermont and how you can help it work in more flexible ways for for some of our most vulnerable populations in the state. We're also here to ask for your support on four requests that together will make Vermont more food secure. And the first request is to please pass legislation to instruct the state to opt in to the SNAP restaurant meals program and appropriate seventy five thousand dollars to cover restaurant startup costs and one hundred thousand dollars for a staff position within DCF to administer the program. To please support five hundred thousand dollars in base funding to strengthen Vermont farms and food security by sustaining two proven programs run by NOFA Vermont. And that first one is Crop Cash, which is a SNAP incentive farmers market program. And the second is FarmShare, which is an incentive program for CFAs. The third is to please support the request for five million dollars in base funding and one time funding in the f y twenty six budget for the Vermont Food Bank as Ava just shared. And finally, to please include an additional two million dollars in base general funding for home delivered meals for older and disabled Vermonters through the Meals on Wheels program, which is run by the Vermont Area Agencies on Aging. The federal nutrition program known as SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is called Three Squares Vermont in our state. It used to be known as food stamps, but when we use any of these names, we're talking about the same program. It's intended to help people with low incomes buy the groceries they need to prevent hunger. The Three Squares Vermont program is administered by the Department for Children and Families Economic Services Division. We've heard and continue to hear that Free Scores Vermont is a lifeline for participants, and in many cases, the only reason they're able to afford groceries at all. And as someone who was raised by an extremely loving, extremely hardworking single father raising twin daughters, I might add, I know that the SNAP benefit my dad got every month was our entire grocery budget. So I know firsthand the power of SNAP to help families get by, to catch up, all while still experiencing the joy of a nourishing shared meal. So it's very true to say that I wouldn't be where I am today without the SNAP program. Eligibility for the programs, primarily, an income based program. So folks have to be at or below a hundred and eighty five percent of the poverty line to qualify. And so as an example, for a family of four, they could not make more than fifty seven thousand dollars a year in order to qualify for this program. And just to note here that that's only about half of what our joint fiscal office calculates a family of four needs to make to meet their basic needs. Three Squares Vermont benefits are deposited every month on what's called an EBT card. Some people refer to the program as EBT. And that EBT card looks and works exactly like a debit card. So a trip to the grocery store with ThreeSquares Vermont looks like any other shopper's experience, which is very much by design. And every retailer that accepts Snap has their own very complex computer system on the back end that is automatically identifying SNAP eligible food items at the register. There are more than seven hundred retailers across the state that accept SNAP benefits, and each month, the program keeps thirteen million dollars of federal dollars in our state economy. And those those dollars are supporting our local farmers, our businesses, our grocers, but right our entire economy as a whole. The state is granted options by the federal government to tailor the program to meet a state's needs. And one of those options is allowing select populations to use their Three Scores Vermont benefits to buy hot prepared meals at authorized restaurants. And this is what's called the SNAP restaurant meals program. It's not separate from the SNAP program. It's just an additional option that states can take to tailor the program. This option is exclusively for people participating in Three Scores Vermont who are older adults, folks with disabilities, and folks experiencing homelessness because these populations typically encounter access barriers and challenges with being able to buy their food, to store their food, and to cook their food. So in expanding the use of Three Spirits Vermont benefits to include restaurants, we can increase the food security among these vulnerable populations by offering them the choice, to do what is best and needed for them. In Vermont, about sixty five thousand people or almost forty thousand households receive Three Squares Vermont. And more than half of those folks are older adults or children. So while Three Squares Vermont effectively reaches the most low income folks in our state, we know that the program only reaches about forty percent of potentially eligible Vermonters and that's based on census income data. And there are a number of reasons for that discrepancy, including additional eligibility requirements beyond income eligibility requirements, but also the complex and time intensive application process and the stigma and shame that is so often associated with tapping into SNAP. We see an even greater gap between the number of Vermonters, reached by Three Squares Vermont and the number of folks who are at risk of hunger. And in twenty twenty two, UVM researchers found that two in five Vermonters were at risk of hunger over the past year. And USDA research indicates that food insecurity is still increasing nationwide. So when we look at, the data now versus twenty twenty one, there are about four point five million more people in our country who are at risk of hunger. Three, of course, Vermont is our most effective anti hunger program, and at the same time, it doesn't reach many Vermonters at risk of hunger. It's just one part of the safety net and can't meet the full need on its own, and it's really not designed to do that anyway. We need to make sure every part of the safety net is strong, and that includes local food access programs like NOFA, Vermont programs, Vermont Food Bank programs, and the and the meal programs for older adults. So the message we want to convey to you today is that together, we can work to ensure that everyone in Vermont at all times has the food they need to thrive. That is possible. And as you know, legislators have a critical role to play in making policy decisions that ensure food security for all. And there are policy choices in front of you this year that can move us forward together. We really appreciate your time. Thank you. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: Questions from Caitlin? Representative? [Speaker 5 ]: I think it makes a lot of sense to expand the access to restaurants. I'm just I'm worried about the extra cost that restaurant meal, you know, food, like how much that dollar how far that goes and how does that impact people that are needing that? [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. That's a really great question. So, it's in the federal requirements that restaurants participating to accept SNAP benefits through the restaurant meals program, they have to have a concession menu basically, that anyone can order from but is intentionally designed to make, to kind of pull out the most affordable meal options on that menu. So that is one really critical way that restaurants, would need to and likely would really want to, tailor their menu to support that participant. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: So for those of you who are in the committee last year, we had some conversations around this and agreed to take this up in more detail this biennium or this session, hopefully, but address it sooner than later. So this is we're working on something of this nature as as a previous commitment, so I just wanted to be vocal about that for newer members. And it the being a restaurant hospitality industry veteran and somebody who worked a lot with the programs and in our emergency response, pandemic, especially with the needs. I definitely have a working understanding of these things well, appreciation for what they do. So I definitely would like us to put this on the the list thing that we're, like, definitely actively considering. So I just wanna say that out loud early for everything. We do have a tremendous workload with the governance stuff that's coming out of the pipeline with the governor's proposals, and that is a newer reality for us in the last week or so. It's a really heavy lift, so I just wanna be very clear with those that our our clients are already stressed. But we definitely have this on the things we've done. Any questions or comments from members? [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you very much. [Vice Chair Lisa Hango ]: Thank you. Thank you. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: Please. [John Sales ]: Everybody, thank you. Thank you for being here and and giving us the time. I appreciate your comments, chair. I'm John Sales. I'm the CEO of Vermont Food Bank, and I live here in Montpelier. I wanna talk about today's ThreeSquares Vermont Awareness Day, how important that is, and also get into a little more detail of what Eva was talking about, the what's the food bank what's the food bank's role in all of this and some of the things that happened last session. As I'm wrapping up, I'll wrap up with all the the asks again at the end. And I also did notice compared to a lot of other committees, you all got a lot on the wall already, so I I appreciate that. I I spent a long time in state government myself, and and government operations is something that that I think we gotta get right. So I appreciate you doing all that work here. I wanna go back first to a point that Ivy just made about in her introduction. Three squares Vermont SNAP program is just one part of of what we need to maintain food security for everyone in It was not designed to be everyone's whole people who are on the program their whole budget. In fact, it's a sliding scale. And if you're near the top of the income eligibility, you get a much smaller benefit than if you're at the bottom of the income eligibility. And so so it's important for us to while we work on the systemic problems that are causing people to be food insecure in Vermont in the first place, to make sure that we're filling in those gaps. You know, food and shelter, medical care, they're just the core things that you need to survive and participate in your communities. And, you know, I've been hearing a lot about workforce participation and and need for housing and all that. And we have a lot of people in Vermont who who we can transition into the workforce, but they need housing, they need food, and they need, you know, air and the stability in life and then be able to gain those skills to be work ready and and get into the the workplace. Last year, I know this committee worked on s three ten that became act one forty three, and thank you for that, and has added food security language to statewide emergency planning. And we're already engaging with the states and and, in the regional, planning arena to make sure that that that critical information is getting in there. We need that tool right now because as you very well know, across the state, we're having disasters all the time. Right? Whether it's a power outage that lasts a couple of days, we could have a really bad snowstorm, an ice storm, the flood flooding that we have had. You know, we all have p s PTSD from flooding now. So, you know, I think every spring now, we're gonna be looking for the the ice jams and the the big melts and concerned about what that's gonna mean. You know, when that happens to folks, particularly folks with low incomes, they lose their refrigerator. They lose their power, and it takes a long time for folks with low incomes and and low resources to build back up. It's not just a matter of, oh, you clean out the house, you get new stuff in, you refill the refrigerator. And Three Squares Vermont is a key part of that. There's actually, emergency Three Squares Vermont benefits that can be implemented to help people refill those fridges and those pantries that were lost in emergencies. And and there's everyday emergencies too. Right? And those are primarily resourced by folks like Ava at the Just Basics, the Montpelier food pantry, and you all have have partners of the food bank, food shelves, meal sites in your districts, and your constituents are using those to, you know, to continue to be members of your communities. Also, we've seen in emergencies that mutual aid organizations and really friends and neighbors just being there to help, and we know that that will continue. Each event in each situation is unique and has different characteristics, and that that makes it harder or easier to use the existing resources to solve the new issues that are coming up that we hadn't hadn't really anticipated. So in Vermont, as I said, we've got a number of these experiences under our belts, and each of them have been learning experiences for all of us. For example, the two thousand three floods, just to show the different levels of impact, Johnson and Londonderry both had their grocery stores flooded out. Right? And the response was very different. Right? In Londonderry, the store was was rehabilitated and reopened. In Johnson, the grocery store, for a lot of reasons, chose not to open. You know, bad location, an operator that didn't have the resources. So now people in Johnson, their closest grocery store is in Morrisville. And other communities where grocery stores were not impacted, but roads were washed out, bridges and culverts washed away. Access to those locations was difficult for days or weeks. And I wanna share a quote from a a couple in the northeast kingdom who whose home property and road were severely hit by flooding in twenty four two thousand four. They said, this summer, our road got so annihilated that it disconnected from the main road. There were periods of time when I didn't have access to food. I had to reach out and someone had to come by ATV to deliver food. I live so rurally that there are no reliable delivery services. Our road is still damaged and disconnected more and more with every rain. I had seeds that I started plants with, and it got a starch and I got a starch from the farmer's market, which actually you can use three squares per month benefits to get plant starts at the farmer's market. And a lot of my growing spaces flooded, and I had root rot that killed the crops I was trying to save for winter. So, you know, these are our neighbors, and they're they're working hard to get by. And disasters are, as I said, are setbacks, and it's difficult to recover. These this particular couple got support from Northeast Kingdom Community Action, NECA, and from the Vermont Food Bank's Three Squares hotline. We operate a hotline, and the food bank also does Three Squares application assistance. So as Ivy mentioned, it's a complicated and long application, and our team will actually sit on the phone or go to your home and and work with people to fill out the application to interpret the confusing letters that then come from DCF and and, like, get people all the way through the process to to when their benefits are set up. You know, more and more, it's our network partner organizations like NECA that are filling the gap in those long recover periods between storms that seem to keep happening. While many of our neighbors benefit from three square Three Squares Vermont or would benefit from Three Squares Vermont. Oh, sorry. I'm misreading my testimony. Many of our neighbors benefit from Three Squares Vermont, but they don't meet the the the the benefits don't meet the high sustained need for food access across the state of Vermont. That's where the Vermont Food Bank and our partners come in. Right? Our work to redistribute food across the state is critical to helping people meet their needs. We get our food from a number of ways, from donations through grocery retailers, from national donations, from communities, from federal food programs, and more often now from food purchase. This includes both food purchased from Vermont farms, but also purchased from other sources, in increasing quantity simply to meet the need. In fact, we purchased last year two point seven million pounds of produce from Canada, and so the tariffs do should they go into effect would cost us between hundred and seventy and two hundred thousand dollars extra. So we've been in contact with the congressional delegation and just, like everyone, just keeping an eye on on what's going on. So the shocks due to weather events, economic conditions, or public health crises are, you know, most difficult for our vulnerable neighbors. There's a a professor doctor Meredith Niles and and a team at UVM who've been supplying data, and Ivy mentioned that too. I invite you there's a a brief, which is in the electronic. There's a link in the electronic copy of my testimony, to to her team's findings and a lot of great data comparing the experiences of people who are food insecure, with the peep with the experience of people who are food secure. So that links in my testimony. The food bank estimates, this is from data we get from our partners, that in twenty twenty four, we served an average of seventy two thousand people per month statewide, both directly and through our partner agencies. That's a lot of Vermonters. And many of our partner organizations and a bunch are represented in the building today testifying in other committees. They'll tell you and some of the individuals, we actually have some folks who receive services who have been testifying today also, That that Three Squares Vermont is is crucial to them and their households, and is a supplement to using the charitable food system. All those people, everyone, whether or not you're eligible for Food Squares Vermont, is welcome at food shelves and meal sites and direct distribution events all across the state. And as we continue to experience the challenging disasters and emergencies, the food bank and our network want to remain responsive. And it can be really challenging when when there's a flood event or if we had flooding from an ice jam or if we had a a an ice storm. The food bank is operating at about hundred and ten percent of our capacity right now, just meeting the needs of our food shelf partners and really not even meeting those needs. Embedded in our request that Ivy had went gone through earlier is one point seven five million for what we're calling responsive readiness. And we I think we talked about that a little bit last year. It's really about the food bank just being able to respond in a in a a period of dramatic increased need to our partners. So when the food shelf when the, you know, the Johnson grocery store floods and is gone and and dozens of people lose their homes, that the food shelves in that area get wiped out. And so this would give us the capacity to always have something in reserve to be able to push into those areas, And it would deepen our partnership on emergency management. And along with the emergency planning bill that we put in that was passed last year will help us integrate food security into the emergency planning and response system in Vermont. All these programs work together. We're weaving this food safety net all across Vermont, and we want, you know, all times to feel like normal times when it comes to people's food security. We wanna be responsive and ready to help our network and support our neighbors at the community level. As Ivy said also, we have the the opportunity you have the opportunity this session, to invest in meaningful support for food security. And when you do, the positive impacts are felt across all fourteen counties in Vermont. There are policy choices in front of the legislature this year, and those policy choices can support food security for everyone who lives here. Again, I'd like to just close by reiterating the programs that we're asking you to support. One is is, the NOFA request for five hundred thousand dollars in base funding to strengthen crop cash and farm share. Those enhance Three Squares Vermont benefits, crop cash at farmers markets. Farm share is a subsidized, CSA program from local farms around the state to people with low incomes. Passed legislation to instruct the state to opt into the SNAP restaurant meals program, which we just talked about, the the food bank's five million dollar base and onetime funding request, one point seven five million in base funding for responsive readiness and three point two five million for food purchase and distribution. And then last but certainly not least, an additional two million dollars in base funding for Meals on Wheels, that really crucial support. It's not just food, you know, for our our older Vermont neighbors. It's somebody stopping in and checking on them, and it is their neighbors doing that. It's volunteers. [Speaker 5 ]: So, again [Vice Chair Lisa Hango ]: Mister Sales, I'm sorry. It is three o'clock, and then we need to be on the house floor. [John Sales ]: And I'm done. [Chair Matthew Birong ]: Alright. Yeah. [Vice Chair Lisa Hango ]: That's all the time. Thank you [Speaker 0 ]: so much. Thank [John Sales ]: you very much. Really appreciate your time, and good luck on the

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SmartTranscript of House Government Operations-2025-02-06-2:30PM

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