SNAP recipients will spend 20 hours a week working, training for a job, or volunteering.
Governor John Kasich’s administration announced this week that beginning next month, able-bodied adults in all but sixteen economically depressed areas will be required to work or participate in job training or volunteer work as a condition of receiving food stamps. The Dispatch reported:
To qualify for benefits, able-bodied adults without children will be required to spend at least 20 hours a week working, training for a job, volunteering or performing a similar type of activity unless they live in one of 16 counties exempt because of high unemployment. The requirements begin next month; however, those failing to meet them would not lose benefits until Jan. 1.
The work requirement is actually a federal regulation, part of the 1996 welfare-reform legislation that Kasich helped pass as chairman of the House Budget Committee when he was in Congress. For years Ohio has taken advantage of a federal waiver exempting food stamp recipients from the work requirements. Though Ohio still qualifies for the federal waiver, the Kasich administration decided to only extend it to those counties whose two-year average unemployment rate was more than 120 percent of the national rate
“The governor believes in a work requirement,” Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols told The Dispatch. “But when the economy is bad and people are hurting, the waiver can be helpful. Now, fortunately, Ohio’s economy is improving.”
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