“I know SNAP has been the highlight of discussion for many, many weeks” Le Sueur County Director of Human Services Jamie Hayes said at the Le Sueur County Board of Commissioners regular meeting on Nov. 18.
Hayes was before the board for the payment authorization of an elevator project, but had time left in her segment to talk about the ongoing federal issues with the SNAP program.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a government program that provides food benefits to supplement the grocery budgets of low-income families. The program had become the focus of funding conversation during the government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12 after lasting six weeks.
“We continued to take applications during the federal shutdown time,” Hayes said, but noted that applications did slow during that period. “I believe people were not understanding that they could still apply and we could still process applications. We just can’t go through that final step of approval and rolling funds out until the shutdown ended.”
Once the government shutdown ended, human services began rolling out SNAP payments in accordance with...
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