COLUMBUS, Ohio — Many Ohioans receiving food stamps would have their photos on the program’s electronic benefit transfer cards under legislation backed by Ohio House and Senate Republicans.
The legislation, which has not yet been introduced in the General Assembly, would exempt adults who have a disability, are age 60 or older, are a victim of domestic violence or have religious exemptions to being photographed.
Bill sponsors Sen. Matt Huffman and Rep. Tim Schaffer said Wednesday the photo requirement will deter people from using other people’s cards.
Stores would not have to check the cards for photos and could not turn away people if the shopper did not match the card photo, Huffman and Schaffer said. But retailers would be encouraged to report suspicious activity to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program.
Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, who last year highlighted possible fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, supported the legislation at a news conference. Yost said benefit cards can be traded for cash or drugs.
“Every instance where there’s something, even relatively small, it undermines public support for it,” Yost said. “At the end of the day, nobody in Ohio or America should go hungry, especially no child, and support for this program will be eroded by it being abused.”
Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks, said she supports rooting out fraud in the program. But she said there could be unintended consequences from the photo requirement, such as a teenager or caregiver being turned away at the register.
“We don’t want it to have a chilling effect,” Hamler-Fugitt said in an interview. “We believe the integrity of the program must be maintained.”
Food stamps are available to households with incomes of up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level — about $15,444 in annual income for one person or $31,596 for a household of four. More than 1.6 million Ohioans received benefits from July 2015 through June 2016.
Benefits are given to the household. The proposed Ohio law would require all household members who use the card to get their own cards or have their photos added to the primary card.
Only two other states put photos on electronic benefit transfer cards — Massachusetts and Maine. Yost said Massachusetts spent $1.5 million to change over to photo cards and about $200,000 a year in ongoing costs.
A 2015 report from the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, concluded Massachusetts’ photo requirement cost more money than it saved and hindered people’s ability to use benefits.
Researchers found retailers there rarely checked cards for photos and that the photo does little if the stores are in on the fraud.
“These policies appear to undermine program participation among eligible households by imposing additional procedural burdens and by re-stigmatizing this important form of federal nutritional assistance,” they wrote.
Yost said the photo requirement would not be an invasion of privacy.
“This is not singling anybody out. This is a routine, systemic kind of approach,” Yost said. “The reason photographs on EBT cards makes sense is the same reason it makes sense on driver’s licenses. It reduces the risk of fraud.”
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