SNAP and EBT Accepted here sign. SNAP and Food Stamps provide nutrition benefits to supplement the budgets of disadvantaged families. (Getty Images)
A bill that would expand the work requirements for West Virginians receiving assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will get another chance at becoming law during the upcoming legislative session, its sponsor said.
Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, who chairs the Senate’s Workforce committee, said he plans to reintroduce legislation similar to Senate Bill 562, which the Senate passed during the 2024 regular session but wasn’t adopted by the House.
With some exceptions, able-bodied adults without dependents ages 18 to 54 are required to work or train for 80 hours a month in order to receive SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, longer than three months.
Roberts’ bill, which last year had nine Republican co-sponsors including newly elected Senate president Randy Smith, R-Tucker, would expand the ages of able-bodied adults from 54 to 59 years old. It would require the state Department of Human Services to assign all able-bodied adults ages 18 to 59 to an employment and training program unless they’re otherwise working or meet another qualification for exemption.
It would allow the state Department of Human Services to exempt up to 20% of individuals from those work requirements based on challenges that the person would experience complying with the requirements.
“We have a problem in West Virginia with a drug epidemic that we have not been able to resolve, though hundreds of millions of dollars have been thrown at it,” said Roberts, a pastor and the principal of a religious school. “We lead the nation. We’re failing.”
The state also has a problem with child abuse, he said.
“We had testimony… in our education committee that those public education teachers are having kids five and six years old that have never been potty trained,” he said. “We are failing at some major things. And teachers say it’s the home, the breakdown of the home and the family unit.”
The state has to deal with what’s in front of it, he said — thousands of able-bodied adults without dependents that are receiving federal SNAP benefits.
“These are the people that I think are also engaged in, maybe the bad behavior at home, negative, traumatic things, maybe with drugs and other things,” Roberts said.
West Virginia Watch pointed out to Roberts that the work requirements generally apply to those without children.
“What I’m saying is that I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives,” Roberts said. “They’re not volunteering, seeking vocational training, or they’re not working. OK, so what are these able-bodied adults doing with no dependents? They are not contributing to society in a positive way, apparently, and are we sustaining that lifestyle? And does that lifestyle impact other negative consequences everywhere in society? I suspect that it does. It’s anecdotal proof.”
Roberts said his bill combines compassion with responsibility.
“I think that’s one of the problems that we’re missing in too many people,” he said “I think it’s hurting other parts of our society where we are hurting and struggling, and I think that I’m not sure what, if any purpose that this group of people has, and I don’t have a problem with the hand out. It’s designed for temporary sustenance, but that’s not what we have anymore. It’s become generational.”
Recent changes to SNAP work requirements
According to the state Department of Human Services, as of Dec. 1, there are 100,799 able-bodied adults without dependents who fall into the age range of 18 to 54 and get SNAP benefits. Of those, 4,055 are currently not meeting or are exempt from the work requirements.
A spokeswoman for the department noted that able bodied adults are defined in federal law as persons between the ages of 18 and 54.
The state first implemented work requirements for SNAP in nine counties as a pilot program in 2016. According to a report from the former Department of Health and Human Resources, in those nine counties, SNAP caseload dropped by approximately 5,417 while the counties saw no significant decreases in unemployment rates.
Nonetheless, the state Legislature in 2018 passed a law expanding those work requirements to all 55 counties. The law was slated to go into effect in 2022, but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic until July 2023.
From August to September 2023, the number of households in the state that receive SNAP benefits dropped by about 8,600, likely because of the implementation of the work requirements, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health said.
SNAP work requirements have also increased at the federal level recently. The Fiscal Responsibility Act, a law enacted in June 2023 that temporarily suspended the federal debt ceiling, increased the ABAWD age limit from 49 to 54, with exceptions for people who are homeless, veterans and young people who aged out of the foster care system.
Bill may have a better chance this year, Roberts said
Last year, Senate Bill 562 easily passed in the Senate with a 32-2 vote. The bill was referred to the House Finance Committee, which did not take it up.
Roberts said he thinks the bill will have a better chance at becoming law this year.
Last year, when it passed in the Senate, it did not have a fiscal note, he said. A fiscal note added later in the session effectively killed the bill in the House, he said.
“By the time you get to the end of the session, and last year, we weren’t able to do the flat budget the way we wanted to, and so [the budget] was already already over that level that anybody was comfortable with, and they killed the bill over in the House,” he said.
The legislation would be implemented over three years. It also has reporting requirements for the state Department of Human Services.
Del. Evan Worrell, a Republican representing Cabell County, said the bill introduced last year included great educational and training opportunities for people. Rather than pass a bill changing West Virginia’s work requirements, Worrell said lawmakers should work with the Department of Human Services to have the state program align with federal rules regarding general work requirements and the work requirements for the able-bodied adults without dependents population.
“I always want to provide a hand up, not a handout,” Worrell said. “But I also want to be clear that I am a person who wants to provide the hand up. You know that I have colleagues that don’t even want to do that, right? That’s not my goal. My goal is like, ‘hey, let’s help people with employment and training, not take away their SNAP.’
“But at least let’s be real about this: There are some people who would sit there and say, ‘Nope, just give me my money. Just let me get my food. And I don’t want to do anything else,’” he said.
House minority leader Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, said he would ask Roberts the purpose of the bill. The state’s education and training program has had a positive effect on people attaining work at higher wages.
But since the SNAP program was scaled back to pre-pandemic levels, he said, thousands of people have lost their benefits and local retailers have lost millions of federal dollars.
“That has a huge effect on the economy,” Hornbuckle said. “So again, if we’ve already scaled back to pre-pandemic levels, people have less SNAP benefits currently, as is, what are we getting at here? I think this is the first question that really needs to be asked and answered.”
Hornbuckle said he’s open to taking a look at most issues, but he’s struggling to figure out what the bill is trying to fix.
Advocates and food bank leaders in the state oppose work requirements for SNAP.
Seth Distefano, policy outreach director for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, called work requirements “weaponized bureaucracy against poor people.” People get lost in the paper work they’re required to do in order to stay on the benefits, he said.
“Don’t be fooled — the accurate name should be paperwork requirements. That’s what these things are,” Distefano said. “Basically you bury people who are struggling economically in paperwork, you do the same thing to the departments that are tasked with supporting them, until people just can’t keep up anymore. And then, we talk about people not falling through the cracks — work requirements create new cracks for people to fall through. That’s the entire point of why they exist in the first place.”
Cynthia Kirkhart, executive director of Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, said she doesn’t see their benefit.
“I think that if the folks that are running these bills and proposals had the same opportunity to see who represents those benefits and had a fuller story of what that looks like in reality, I think that there would be less urgency to take benefits away from people that are really trying hard to get out of poverty,” Kirkhart said.
“SNAP benefits have been proven to be part of the success formula for people to get out of poverty,” Kirkhart said. “Because they have resources to purchase food, and if you’re well fed, or at least you have access to resources for food, then you can support all the other things that cost money and resources in our lives — gas and rent and medicine and all those things.”
Demand at the Huntington foodbank, which serves people in 11 West Virginia counties as well as some in Kentucky and Ohio, has been up 25% over last year, she said, though she does not know if that is all due to changes for SNAP.
Tammy Hatton, of Salt Rock in Cabell County, would currently fall into the ABAWD category and be required to meet work requirements to receive benefits, but a car accident left her physically unable to work. Since the wreck nearly a year and a half ago, she’s had to stop working at her retail job.
With a metal rod in her leg and a plate in her wrist, she can’t stand for long periods of time. She’s applied but not yet been approved for disability through the federal Social Security Administration, a process she’s heard may not go quickly.
Hatton got food stamps this month and will again in January and February, but after that, unless she’s approved for disability, she won’t be able to get SNAP, she said.
“I’m a little bit worried about that, too, because they’ve really been a godsend,” Hatton said. “I’ve spent a lot of time at pantries and a lot of time at mobile food distribution lines whenever I’ve been able to get a ride. So the food stamps have really been a godsend. They haven’t had me getting out of the house as much trying to search for food.”
Hatton, 49, is unmarried and does not have children. Since the accident left her unable to work, she’s lost her apartment and her vehicle. She’s moved in with a cousin who owns their own home, she said.
Hatton said she’d like state lawmakers to know that “not everything is so black and white with everybody.” Hatton said she’d love to not need the SNAP assistance. Before the accident, she didn’t need government assistance.
“I appreciate the assistance that I have been able to get,” she said. “But whenever it feels like somebody’s almost breathing down your neck and telling you that you’ve got to have this and that, or you’ve got to meet this criteria and you have to have this turned in by a certain time. It makes things so stressful, because I’m trying.
“It’s not that I’m not trying to give everybody what they want,” she said. “It’s just that I’m one person who is halfway crippled and can’t really do too much, and I just want to be able to make it.” `
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