In an interview, Press Secretary Angel A. Demapan said the administration is not completely closing its doors on the proposal to get the CNMI into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.
The administration’s only concern, Demapan said, is the commonwealth’s “inability to absorb the additional cost” of shifting from the existing nutrition assistance block grant to SNAP as proposed in Congressman Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan’s H.R. 1465 or the AYUDA Act.
Demapan said under the current Nutrition Assistance Program, the CNMI receives federal assistance for eligible families. Under SNAP, the commonwealth will pay for certain costs.
He said given the financial challenges CNMI faces, “the government is not exactly prepared at this point to take an additional burden of cost.”
Demapan said transitioning to SNAP will bring more funding for food stamps but “it would also burden the commonwealth with the millions of dollars in administrative cost.”
The administrative cost according to Congressman Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan would be $600, 000.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s program accountability and budget division, in a April 2009 letter to regional SNAP directors, said “the state agency may spend the ARRA funds for any allowable SNAP administrative costs.”
But the USDA added, “While a state agency may use the current ARRA funds to supplant current administrative costs, it would lose the federal 50 percent match on the state funds that were supplanted with ARRA funds.”
Demapan said Gov. Benigno R. Fitial understood the concerns raised by Sablan.
But the administration through the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs is already in the process of negotiating with USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, he added.
There are certain stages that DCCA must go through and those are what the department is doing now, Demapan said.
DCCA was scheduled to appear before a panel for review and determination last week and the administration is now waiting for the result, he added.
“DCCA and the NAP office have continuously been working alongside their federal counterparts on this issue. So to come out and say that the administration is ignoring the issue is not right,” Demapan said.
The Fitial administration, he added, does not want to undermine the local officials’ efforts by going in a different direction.
