A legislative subcommittee voted Friday to cut $20 million of mostly federal money for the biennium out of the state budget for a summer lunch program for children.
Legislators in support of the cut argued the program was duplicative of other resources that feed children, and they feared it would require additional spending on staff at the state health department, the Daily Montanan reports.
Those who opposed the cut said they didn’t believe the additional spending on staff was needed, and they argued the legislature could approve the funding for food, but turn down a separate budget proposal for 12 new employees.
The Montana Food Bank Network said 76,543 children relied on the dollars in the summer of 2024, and the funds are “crucial.”
The removal took place as the Joint Subcommittee on Health and Human Services reviewed its portion of the state’s budget in House Bill 2, although the Legislature still could vote to restore the funds.
The funds taken out amounted to $10.1 million for the 2026 fiscal year and $9.9 million for the 2027 fiscal year. Federal money accounted for the bulk of the total; $353,000 of the roughly $10 million for the first year comes from the state, and $231,000 out of the total for the second year comes from the state.
Samantha Dennison, of the Montana Food Bank Network, said the state was among the first to submit a letter of intent to participate in the federal program for summer 2024, the first summer it was implemented nationwide.
She said the money provides a $120 grocery benefit per eligible child for the summer, it is not duplicated with other programs, and it has an annual economic impact of $9 million in Montana.
“These benefits are crucial to our most rural community members who might not have summer meal programming, so they’re able to use this grocery benefit at their local grocery stores, at the Albertsons, at the Walmart, to help those ends meet,” Dennison said.
Sen. Emma Kerr-Carpenter, D-Billings, said the line item was “straight cash” to support children who receive help with meals during the school year, but not during the summer, and it didn’t include additional personnel.
“Well-nourished children lead to quality adults, and so I see this as a worthy investment in our future in Montana,” Kerr-Carpenter said.
But Chairperson Rep. Jane Gillette, R-Three Forks, said she believes other programs already support children, such as food backpacks and lunches in the park.
“In my mind, this is redundant to programs that we already have,” Gillette said. “I think our kids have been doing pretty darn good.”
Rep. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, said lunches in the park are gone at least in Helena, the backpack program is different, and she said if the EBT program, Electronic Benefit Transfer, is redundant, the money would go unused.
Caferro joined three other Democrats to support keeping the program, and five Republicans opposed it, but this weekend, Caferro said Democrats are not giving up on the idea.
The subcommittee unanimously voted against the related line item to add 12 staff, which Kerr-Carpenter said was a bipartisan signal it did not see the need to grow government in that way at this time.
Dennison agreed Montana does have another program that helps children, one through the Office of Public Instruction. However, she said it reaches only an estimated 19% of the students who get support for lunches during the school year, which is the reason the federal government expanded resources, including summer EBT.
Dennison also said a lot of sponsors can’t run the program out of OPI for the entire summer, so families end up without resources for weeks before school starts, and the EBT programs helps them buy groceries, similar to SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
She said the summer months are the hungriest for children because they lack the school meals they can count on during the academic year, and one in six children in Montana lives in a “food insecure household.”
“That means the household does not know where their next meal is coming from,” Dennison said. “That (one in six) is up from the pandemic. So when we take these resources away, it is leaving children hungry.”
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