Remember the thorough legislative debate in Georgia last winter to decide if it’s worth $7.8 million to embed ID photos on food stamp cards?
No, you don’t — because that debate didn’t take place. The legislation that calls for Georgia to implement food stamp photo IDs did receive lots of attention and publicity during the 2014 Georgia General Assembly. Most people called it the “food stamp drug-testing law” because that’s the part that got all the publicity.
Gov. Nathan Deal signed the bill into law last spring, but shelved plans to enforce its much-debated drug-testing provision when the state’s attorney general advised against it. Left to live on is the equally ill-advised and quietly approved plan to put photo IDs on food stamp cards.
The lack of debate about the photo ID provision is a shame, because nobody pointed out it doesn’t make much sense as a means to prevent fraud through food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Georgia lawmakers signed off on this with no budget office estimate of the cost to create a photo ID system for fraud prevention compared to the state’s expected financial gain. These estimates are often created for laws with smaller costs to the taxpayer. The first public reckoning of the true cost came during a state department’s meeting in late summer, when it was disclosed it will cost $7.8 million to launch the program by January 2016.
Supporters of the photo ID requirement argue photos on food stamp cards will prevent recipients from selling their card and PIN for cash. But this untested hypothesis conflicts with the facts.
Federal law says seniors, people with disabilities and other food stamp recipients who have trouble getting to the store are allowed to designate someone outside their household to shop for them. When one of these designated shoppers presents a food stamp card with someone else’s picture, cashiers will not know if the person is helping a home-bound senior or committing fraud.
Georgia’s misguided effort comes after years of progress by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reduce food stamp fraud. The federal agency cut sales of food stamp benefits for cash by 75 percent over the past 15 years. Less than 1 percent of food stamp benefits are trafficked nationally.
Asking Georgia’s retailers to police food stamp fraud at the cash register demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the vast majority of fraud happens. It usually takes place on an organized scale in small stores with corrupt owners. Dishonest owners will not be deterred by photo IDs on food stamp cards, because they are a party to the crime.
The government in recent years replaced paper food stamp coupons with electronic debit cards, an essential tool to reduce fraud. Electronic tracking allows intricate computer programs to analyze food stamp transactions for patterns that indicate abuse. These systems alert federal and state law enforcement agencies to potential violations. When you see a headline about food stamp fraud, it is probably above a story that says the system worked to catch a criminal.
I’ve heard that one type of recipient fraud the food stamp photo ID is supposed to prevent is online sales that convert the benefit card into cash at less than face value. A quick check of a popular online classified website turned up two such ads in September, posted by people claiming to be from Georgia.
If that’s the problem we’re trying to solve, I think I have a better solution than the $7.8 million photo ID plan. Georgia can hire someone for the generous salary of $80,000 per year to monitor online classifieds for fraud.
There, we just saved $7.7 million.
Melissa Johnson is a policy analyst with the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute.
