The Oklahoma Contingency Board is dedicating $7 million in state emergency funds for food banks amid federal uncertainty. Led by Gov. Kevin Stitt and top Republican leaders in each legislative chamber, the board met Monday evening to declare a state of emergency and approve the spending.
The contingency review board is made up of Gov. Kevin Stitt, Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert – it's meant to address unforeseen emergencies on short notice.
Stitt said the threat of 685,000 losing access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a problem that Congress has to fix.
"And I think all of America – myself, the state leaders I've talked to, the Oklahomans I've talked to are asking, when is this going to end?" Stitt said. "And we just want to continue to encourage Congress to fix this problem."
The $7 million will be released $1 million at a time from the State Emergency Fund, over seven weeks, to fund food banks in Oklahoma, across all 77 counties. The account currently holds approximately $7.8 million in total.
An additional $72,000 was also approved for software updates meant to allow the state department of human services to deposit money into food assistance EBT cards.
And while Stitt encouraged Oklahomans to be good neighbors and help each other as their federal benefits are cut off, Paxton said he was surprised that Oklahomans are among the most reliant on food assistance.
"I was surprised because I really hadn't ever paid that close of attention to how many Oklahomans are actually receiving SNAP benefits," Paxton said. "And you compare the state of Oklahoma with the rest of the nation. We're in the top four in the nation as far as number, percentage-wise, number of our citizens that are on these SNAP benefits."
About 17% of Oklahomans are enrolled in the food assistance program.
Other states in the top four, per-capita rates of people enrolled, are Louisiana at 18%, Oregon at 18% and New Mexico at 21%. Reporters asked Paxton during a post-meeting gaggle if he had ideas to help bring Oklahoma out of its high poverty rankings.
"We're also joined in the top four by Oregon, who is not a higher poverty state," Paxton said. "So it's states like Mississippi that have a lower per capita income than we do, that are way down on that list that, you know, we're way up there. My question is why? I don't know the answer to that."
House Speaker Kyle Hilbert chimed in with an idea, getting to what he thinks is one of Oklahoma's fundamental issues, leading to high poverty rates.
"One of the things, if we want to break poverty for the long term cycle, we have to make sure we're improving our education outcomes," Hilbert said. "And one of the things Mississippi did is drastically improve their reading scores."
Mississippi education leaders took years of work to improve reading scores, which included increasingly holding struggling kids back and improving access to better reading curriculum and more high dosage tutoring.
Hilbert said requiring certain reading test scores to advance to fourth grade, and other solutions, are on the table for discussion during next year's legislative session.
