Does The Public Have The Right To Know Where SNAP Money Is Spent?

Photo by Lidye on Unsplash

We live in the dawn of the era of 'big data' today which stands to change the way we see the world of tomorrow.  Through analyzing large data sets (i.e., big data), deeper connections and correlations are inevitable while large amounts of money stand to be made by both governments and private corporations.  Large amounts of data exist.  The main problem is extracting that data from its source and correlating different formats together.  This takes time.  What type of data is acceptable to remove and what kind of information is not acceptable to have?



Currently, the longest running court case is being heard on the Supreme Court.  The case involves a private newspaper company, Argus Leader, out of South Dakota and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  The SNAP program has been under fire during the Trump Administration -- whose efforts to try to defund or severely limit by placing restrictions on the recipients.  The SNAP effort is described as follows from the Wikipedia page:

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly and commonly known as the Food Stamp Program, provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people living in the United States. It is a federal aid program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by each U.S. state's Division of Social Services or Children and Family Services.

SNAP benefits supplied roughly 40 million Americans in 2018.[2] Approximately 9.2% of American households obtained SNAP benefits at some point during 2017, with approximately 16.7% of all children living in households with SNAP benefits.[2] Beneficiaries and costs increased sharply with the Great Recession, peaked in 2013 and have declined through 2017 as the economy recovered.[2] It is the largest nutrition program of the 15 administered by FNS and is a key component of the social safety net for low-income Americans.[3]

The amount of SNAP benefits received by a household depends on the household's size, income, and expenses. For most of its history, the program used paper-denominated "stamps" or coupons – worth $1 (brown), $5 (blue), and $10 (green) – bound into booklets of various denominations, to be torn out individually and used in single-use exchange. Because of their 1:1 value ratio with actual currency, the coupons were printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Their rectangular shape resembled a U.S. dollar bill (although about one-half the size), including intaglio printing on high-quality paper with watermarks. In the late 1990s, the Food Stamp Program was revamped, with some states phasing out actual stamps in favor of a specialized debit card system known as Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), provided by private contractors. EBT has been implemented in all states since June 2004. Each month, SNAP benefits are directly deposited into the household's EBT card account. Households may use EBT to pay for food at supermarkets, convenience stores, and other food retailers, including certain farmers' markets.[4]

With 40 million Americans relying on SNAP relief for food, why is the Trump administration trying to limit the food availability for Americans'?   The cost of the program is $70 billion for 40 million Americans.  Whereas the United States spent $3.5 trillion on healthcare in the same year.  That is 50 times the amount spent on the SNAP initiative.  Why would we want to limit access to food assistance?  Especially, when the program has been extended for venues such as Farmer's Markets -- which promote healthy foods?



The point in contention is that the residents of South Dakota believe they have a right to know where the money is spent.  Is the money spent preferentially on certain types of stores (i.e., Walmart)?  A recent e-mail from 'Politico Agriculture' gives a summary of the status and an update to the current proceedings:

SCOTUS TO HEAR SNAP RETAIL DATA CASE TODAY: After nearly eight years of litigation, the Argus Leader newspaper's quest to obtain SNAP retail sales data lands in the Supreme Court today for oral arguments.

What's at stake: The court will ultimately decide what constitutes confidential business information as it relates to public access to government records. Retailers have argued that store-level SNAP sales data essentially amounts to a trade secret and releasing it would harm retailers.

The Argus Leader, a newspaper in Sioux Falls, S.D., has argued the public has a right to know how and where taxpayer dollars are being spent in the $65 billion program.

The PR angle: Public perception of major retailers is at stake, because releasing a breakdown of sales data would undoubtedly open a new debate about how retailers rely on SNAP as a major share of their sales. Walmart, for example, has long been criticized for taking in a large share of SNAP dollars, while many of its employees utilize the program. Amazon is increasingly facing similar scrutiny.

How we got here: The long-running fight began in 2011 when the Argus Leader filed a lawsuit after USDA denied its Freedom of Information Act request, which had sought retail sales data for five years of store-level SNAP purchases. For awhile, the department fought the request in court.

But in 2017 USDA decided not to appeal a judge's ruling that the government had failed to show that releasing the data would cause real competitive harm to retailers. At that point, the Food Marketing Institute, which represents major retailers, stepped in and eventually succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to take the case.

Brush up on all the twists and turns in the case with the Argus Leader's timeline.

A newspaper's crusade: The Argus Leader, now owned by Gannett, is South Dakota's largest newspaper, but it's still noteworthy that the small paper kept up its fight to access the USDA data for so many years. The reporters who initially filed the FOIA request have said they wanted to use the data to search for trends and write about which companies were profiting from the programs. As Megan Luther, one of the reporters who filed the request, put it to the Associated Press, "Taxpayers have a right to know where their money is going."

The retailer argument: FMI contends FOIAs are meant to shed light on government activities, not the sales trends of private businesses. "Retailers zealously protect the confidentiality of sales data because of the innumerable ways that competitors can use such information to more effectively compete against them," the group says on its website. "Congress expressly exempted confidential commercial information from mandatory disclosure." The association launched a landing page with resources backing its position. Find that here.

Impact on FOIA: The case, Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, could end up having much broader implications for what is considered confidential financial and business information in the context of FOIA requests.

What's next: SCOTUS is expected to release its decision this summer.

I am no lawyer, but this seems to qualify as 'excessive overreach.'  Why should the shopping habits of Americans' be made public to the people of South Dakota?  This represents private corporate data to which Americans do not need or have access to.  The implications of the decision are quite significant.  Any federal spending could be questioned -- in detail.  Which would probably run up against privacy law?  The choice before the Supreme Court is fascinating and will be followed by yours indeed.  Stay Tuned!



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