The Utah Reauthorization Project (UREAP) seeks common ground recommendations for the next phase of welfare reform. UREAP is described in the final pages of this Position Paper, including its goals, principles, and membership.

We begin with a recommendation to recast the Food Stamp Program as a "food security" and "nutrition supplement" program aimed at health enhancement for children, people with disabilities, and elderly persons and supporting working families, rather than as a welfare program. This calls for making modifications to the program that will encourage participation by low income households, rather than stigmatize it. Of paramount importance to accomplish this mission, we support changes to the Food Stamp Program that

• make it easily accessible to working people and compatible with other assistance and work support programs (e.g., TANF, Medicaid, and Child Care), reduce program complexity, and institute processes that help eligible working families retain their connection to Food Stamps when they leave the cash assistance rolls, rather than lose it;
• facilitate access by elderly people and people with disabilities who are in need of nutritional supplementation;
• ensure that quality control provisions measure meaninful state performance in fulfilling the purposes of the program, and eliminate penalties that operate to discourage states from focusing on good customer service and assisting working families;
• restore Food Stamp eligibility for legal non citizens;
• reduce the severity of time limits on unemployed childless adults.

 We therefore urge Congress to consider the following specific recommendations:

Eligibility, Benefits, Reporting, Income Verification, and Recertification

We join the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), and America's Second Harvest in recommending the following changes to the Food Stamp Program:

1. Increase program benefits to all beneficiaries, simplify the program's eligibility process, and streamline requirements for reporting changes and recertifying households;
2. Eliminate or streamline confusing and burdensome income verification rules and other required practices related to eligibility;
3. Increase the minimum benefit to at least $25 per month;
4. Acknowledge the need for working recipients to have reliable transportation by exempting from the asset test one vehicle per working person (a minimum of one vehicle per household) and simplify the program's other asset tests;
5. When recipients leave the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program, allow transitional benefits to be continued for at least six months at the level authorized prior to closure of the cash assistance case;
6. Restore federal food stamp eligibility for legal noncitizens by reinstating the noncitizen eligibility policies in effet prior to August 1996.

1. Set income verification at intervals of at least six-months, although recipients would have the right to apply for benefit recalculation at any time. Allow states to develop methods of obtaining earnings information that facilitate, rather than hamper, the ability of working recipients to use the program;
2. Scale the standard deduction to household size;
3. Remove the shelter cap to allow food help to reach people with high rent and utilities costs;
4. Simplify the deduction structure, but without working a negative impact on those who benefit from the existing deductions and those who live in areas with high living costs;
5. Modify the earned income deduction or allow states to design earned income deductions that recognize and promote an increase in earnings;
6. Replace use the Thrifty Food Plan as a basis for Food Stamp benefits with a measure that more accurately reflects the actual, modern-day food costs of low-income households, such as the USDA Low Cost or Moderate Food Plans;
7. Restore indexing of the minimum benefit to inflation;
8. Align Medicaid, TANF, Food Stamps, and other major supportive programs in terms of definitions, redetermination/recertification rules, eligibility verification, asset limits, and review procedures and standards.
9. Simplify household composition rules, while ensuring that eligibility is not reduced;
10. Simplify benefits for person in group-living arrangements;
11. Facilitate access and enhance Food Stamp participation by SSI recipients by, a) implementing an automatic trigger to immediate Food Stamp application and eligibility determination at the Social Security Office for SSI applicants--in no way tied to eligibility determination for SSI benefits--and b) directly certifying food stamps for SSI recipients in eligible living situations;
12. Augment the existing medical deduction process with a standard medical deduction to ease the application process for elderly applicants with few unreinmbursed costs;
13. Ensure that primarily elderly and disabled food stamp recipients do not lose their benefits or think they have lost eligibility in EBT systems that take benefits off-line after three months.

We join the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), and America's Second Harvest in recommending the following changes to the Food Stamp Program:

1. Replace the program's outmoded error rate calculations with a new system of outcome measures to assess goals appropriate for working families and other program recipients.

1. Reward states for strong customer service, such as for providing benefits in a timely fashion, limiting the number of improper denials;
2. Reward states for positive recipient outcomes, such as increased, a) family income, b) attachment to the work force, c) numbers of former TANF recipients who remain on Food Stamps, d) numbers of working, elderly, and disabled recipients receiving benefits;
3. Allow for and direct FNS to approve innovative state waivers to test new reporting and processing options.

We recommend the following changes:

1. Ensure that a national goal of enhanced child nutrition is fulfilled by eliminating provisions that make eligibility contingent on work requirements or certain kinds of parental conduct and ban full family sanctions in the Food Stamp Program. Pursue ways to ensure that states are fully informing low-income families (i.e., through outreach), especially those leaving welfare, of their right to continue receiving Food Stamps as long as they are income-eligible.
2. Facilitate access to program benefits, giving special attention to barriers that reduce participation by working families, seniors, and people with disabilities.
3. Facilitate the combined delivery of food stamps with other important work supports such as Medicaid and child care;
4. Test ways to facilitate enrollment and coordination outside of the welfare office, e.g., through a) co-location of food stamp eligibility workers with outstationed Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility workers at hospitals, clinics, and other health care providers serving large numbers of low-income people and b) allowing households that wish to to apply for food stamps over the Internet and be interviewed by telephone, rather than requiring all applicants to visit the welfare office.

We recommend the following changes:

1. Preserve the program's national structure, at the same time as states are allowed increased administrative flexibility.
2. Increase flexibility in the implementation of electronic benefit transfer systems to accommodate the special circumstances of beneficiaries who are elderly, have disabilities, or live in rural or inner-city areas.
3. Implement financial and administrative mechanisms to assist states with the increased costs and responsibilities of Electronic Benefit Transfer systems.
4. Do not block grant the Food Stamp program.
5. Restore the historic 50 percent match rate for normal administrative expenditures.

We recommend the following changes:

1. If it is not politically feasible to eliminate time limits and work requirements for childless unemployed adults (also known as Able-bodied Adults without Dependents or ABAWDs), extend their eligibility to at least six months and expand the definition of an allowable work activity to include job search and job search training.
2. Provide sufficient employment and training funding to serve all those subject to work requirements. Give states the option to implement alignments that support working families through training and earnings progression in private sector jobs, and that eliminate unnecessary and repetitive recertification requirements. Eliminate setasides restricting expenditures of employment and training funding to ABAWDS.
3. Eliminate the $25 monthly maximum for federal matching of employment and training expenses.
4. Provide more flexibility in the administration of the Food Stamp Employment and Training program.

1. Pass HR 2142 and its companion bill, S. 583, both named Nutrition Assistance for Working Families and Seniors Act, in order to a) restore Food Stamp eligibility for needy legal immigrants, b) increase benefit allotments for families with children, c) raise minimum Food Stamp benefit to $25, d) treat child support income favorably, e) expand state option for transitional Food Stamp assistance, f) improve Food Stamp access, g) bolster the TEFAP program, h) create pilot projects designed to improve access to the food stamp program.
2. Support, at the very least, funding levels and provisions in the Nutrition Title of Senator Richard Lugar's Farm Bill. If additional funding over that provided in this bill is not found, we do not support actions that would further reduce access or benefit levels.

Utah has a long history of considering how to help welfare families become self-reliant. The Utah Reauthorization Project (UREAP) is a broad-based effort to educate state and national decision-makers and the public about needed refinements to the current welfare system, to muster congressional support for common ground solutions that will help stabilize vulnerable families, and to enhance efforts to address poverty in our state and nation.

UREAP has as its vision of the next phase of welfare reform strengthening our nation by building families' and individuals' economic and social well-being. We seek to be involved in realizing this vision as Congress considers the 2002 Reauthorization of major pieces of the 1996 welfare law, as well as related measures in the intervening months and beyond.  It is appropriate at this time to consider what has been learned since 1996 and look ahead to new, common ground public policy options that provide an adequate investment and an overdue change in focus for the Food Stamp Program. We have an opportunity with Reauthorization to revitalize our national commitment to end hunger in America and support the nutrition and health of working families, seniors, and people with disabilities.

UREAP will support and encourage provisions throughout the welfare reform reauthorization process which:

1. set a clear and consistent goal to reduce poverty.
2. meet temporary and emergency needs.
3. facilitate job advancement and increased earnings through training or skill-development for those who can move toward self-reliance.
4. sustain basic needs and dignity for those families and individuals who are not able to achieve self-reliance.
5. afford families and individuals with the opportunities and resources they need to address their barriers to achieving economic independence before they leave the welfare system.
6. support the efforts of families and individuals to move forward.
7. make work pay.
8. provide necessary supports to families and individuals as they transition from welfare to work.
9. emphasize the care and well-being of children, as they are the majority of welfare recipients.
10. include appropriate flexibility and encouragement to allow states, localities, and Indian Tribes to run programs that are responsive to special populations and circumstances.
11. provide increased or at least present levels of funding to support necessary programs and services to effect positive outcomes for families and individuals.
12. finance welfare reform without resulting in harm to other vulnerable groups.

Active Re-Entry, Price, (Southeastern Utah)
Box Elder Family Support Center, Brigham City, (Box Elder County)
Bringing Hope to Single Moms Foundation, Logan, (Cache and Box Elder Counties)
Community Action Services, Provo, (Utah, Wasatch, and Summit Counties)
Disabled Rights Action Coalition (DRAC), Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake County)
Family Support and Children's Justice Center of Carbon and Emery Counties, Price
International Rescue Committee, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
JEDI for Women, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Legislative Coalition for People with Disabilities Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Mental Health Association in Utah, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Options for Independence, Logan, (Northern Utah)
Peace & Justice Commission, Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
People Helping People, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake County)
Salt Lake Community Action Program (SLCAP), Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake and Tooele Counties)
Tri-County Independent Living Center, Ogden (Weber, Davis, and Morgan Counties)
United Way Executive Directors Association (UWEDA), SLC, (Salt Lake County)
Utah Children, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Utah Community Action Program Association (UCAPA), (statewide)
Utah Issues, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Utahns Against Hunger, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Valley Mental Health, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake and Tooele Counties)
Walsh & Weathers Research and Policy Studies, Fruitland
Your Community Connection, Ogden, (Weber County)

Membership list updated on 9/18/01