Hunter’s amendment came just one day after telling WBEZ, “What is the sense in doing (the bill) if you take the reimbursement portion out?”ĭHS staff recently said they needed more time to understand the scope of the alleged skimming, Hunter said.ĭHS declined an interview request. There’s a public hearing slated for this week. Mattie Hunter, D-Chicago, introduced an amendment that would strip the reimbursement portion from the bill. “They refuse to budge,” Harper said of leaders at DHS who don’t want to include the reimbursement portion. She and legal advocates say the state claims it would cost at least $20 million, but they’re not clear what those estimates are based on. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago, a former SNAP recipient, led the proposal’s passage in the House - which included the reimbursement portion. This tension has fueled a proposed law that would require the Illinois Department of Human Services, or DHS, which administers SNAP benefits around the state, to not only replace stolen benefits with state dollars from January to September 2022, but also to track skimming going forward. Law proposed in Springfield to address skimming “Just like I expect to not be charged for the things that the person who skimmed my credit card at the gas station has put on my credit card, it’s equally important, or probably more important, for low-income folks to be able to be made whole for the benefits that they lost,” said Carrie Chapman, senior director of policy and advocacy at Legal Council for Health Justice. And now SNAP recipients are also losing a bump in benefits they received during the COVID-19 pandemic. JB Pritzker’s administration has not agreed to replace stolen funds. Some states are filling in the gap further, by refunding victims whose benefits were stolen from January to September 2022.īut in Illinois, advocates that include Legal Council for Health Justice and the Shriver Center on Poverty Law in Chicago say Democratic Gov. The federal government is reimbursing people whose benefits were stolen since October. Torres is part of a wave of low-income people who have gotten caught up in a nationwide skimming spree of SNAP benefits that started to spike last year. This year, each Illinois household member is estimated to receive on average just shy of $200 a month. They receive a monthly amount of money based on need. More than two-thirds of recipients were in families with children. In Illinois, roughly 2 million residents, or 1 in 6, received SNAP benefits in the 2022 fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. ![]() ![]() ![]() SNAP, short for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and formerly known as food stamps, is a federal program that aims to help low-income families buy food. Torres discovered that someone allegedly spent more than $3,000 of her food benefits at a small corner store she says she’s never been to about four miles from her home in South Lawndale on the West Side. She wasn’t working at the time and said she had been saving her food benefits to make sure she could keep feeding her family, which includes three children, in case her husband lost his part-time job. After I turned around and I saw the line, I was embarrassed.” “I’m like, ‘what are you talking about?’ ” said Torres, 38, hearing a line of customers snicker behind her.
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