Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
The $5 million from Kentucky’s “rainy day fund” that Gov. Andy Beshear gave to food pantries on Friday is headed to distribution centers with one directive: buy food and give it away quickly.
Melissa McDonald, the executive director of Feeding Kentucky, a network of seven food pantries tasked with disseminating the funds to organizations serving people in need, said the “bulk” of the emergency money will go to the largest banks, God’s Pantry and Feeding America Kentucky Heartland. The other food banks in the network will get the remainder, split based on rates of food insecurity.
“Their estimated time to spend it is as soon as possible,” McDonald said during a Monday afternoon press conference.
As soon as Tuesday, she said, many food banks will be able to hit “purchase” on orders of food. The types of food and how it’s distributed will vary by location. As the colder months begin, fresh produce is harder to come by, McDonald said, making for “a tough season.”
While elderly Kentuckians and children often face higher rates of food insecurity, McDonald said food pantries are seeing “a mix of everyone” in need right now.
“You’re hitting with the federal shutdown; you’re hitting, also, those individuals that have worked for the federal government that are now missing their second paycheck, and they may never have thought that they would ever be in a situation where they would need food assistance,” she said. “So it’s hitting everyone.”
As the federal government shutdown drags on, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits have been in limbo. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in late October that it wouldn’t use contingency funds to keep SNAP benefits flowing, which left 42 million Americans and around 563,000 Kentuckians to face uncertainty about how to afford groceries on Nov. 1.
Beshear joined other Democrats in suing over the decision, and several judges have said that the Trump administration can’t block the funds. Beshear then declared a state of emergency on Friday and directed $5 million from the state’s budget reserve trust fund to food banks that are part of the Feeding Kentucky network.
Meanwhile, the USDA announced Monday it will pay about half of November SNAP benefits, but they could take months to make it to recipients’ hands, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reported.
As that battle unfolds, Feeding Kentucky will continue to get food assistance to people, but the organization’s capacity is far below the federal government’s, McDonald said: SNAP pays for nine meals for every one that food pantries cover across the nation.
The $5 million in emergency funding “was a nice, big surprise,” McDonald said. But: “The sustainability of this is all going to depend on the federal government. We know what our big push is to make sure that SNAP is funded.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
