Committee pushes back on monthly stats on public assistance

By KJ Drazen and Brandon Lorenz, Missouri News Network
JEFFERSON CITY — A bill that would require both the Department of Health and Senior Services and the Department of Social Services to report monthly data relating to public assistance programs on their websites ran into criticism in committee Thursday morning.
There was bipartisan questioning on the need for the bill. Committee members said they felt this information on programs such as SNAP benefits and Medicaid is made public on an annual basis, so making the information public on a monthly basis would waste government resources.
House Bill 1817, sponsored by Becky Laubinger, R-Park Hills, would require public assistance programs to report data including the total number of households enrolled, the total number of people served, the average benefit in dollars received by each household and the number of households that became ineligible to receive benefits. This would apply for cities, villages, towns and counties with more than 1,000 residents.
"It really helps to know if the public assistance and the charity work are being effective in the community," explained Laubinger. "If you see numbers rising every year, then what we're doing isn't effective."
Questions arose about the need for this bill as some committee members felt this would waste government resources.
"Rather than creating a law which would mandate our department to dedicate resources for something that they are already doing, can't we just see if we're going to get turned down first?" asked Rep. Don Mayhew, R-Crocker, referring to constituents asking for a data request from these departments instead.
According to Laubinger, there are currently 655,000 to 662,000 people, or 10% of the population, receiving SNAP benefits. There are also 150,000 people receiving housing assistance and between 15% and 23% that are on Medicaid, she said.
These kinds of numbers are what nonprofits and charities are looking to be reported on monthly, she said.