Estimated Cost of State Food Stamp Plan for Legal Immigrants Quadruples

SACRAMENTO — In an indication of the high cost the state will face if it must take over welfare for legal immigrants, the legislative analyst’s office Friday estimated the price of a state-funded food stamp program for that group at $175 million a year, more than four times what lawmakers first anticipated.

The estimate, provided as lawmakers attempt to fashion a budget for the new fiscal year, is based on an assumption that 345,000 legal immigrants stand to lose their food stamps later this year because of last year’s federal welfare overhaul.

Previously, Senate budget writers estimated the cost of a state-funded food stamp program at $40 million. The Assembly placed the amount at $20 million.

“These are kids and disabled people. You can’t just roll them out on the streets and let them go hungry,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), co-chairman of the conference committee working on the 1997-98 budget.

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In what could emerge as a major issue in the coming debate over the budget, Democrats, particularly from Los Angeles, have been pushing for the state to pick up the cost of aid to legal immigrants who will lose various benefits later this year.

Gov. Pete Wilson and most Republicans in the Legislature generally oppose having the state pay the costs.

The Democratic-controlled Assembly last week approved a bill that would require the state to cover benefits including food stamps for poor and disabled legal immigrants. The cost was set at $700 million, though that probably is an underestimate given the price of a state food stamp program.

Lawmakers on the six-member conference committee working on the new $68-billion state budget put off a vote on whether to create a state-funded food stamp program. Instead, Republicans and Democrats agreed to send a letter to the California congressional delegation and Wilson urging that they push for restoration of federal aid.

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Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who was in the hearing room Friday lobbying budget conferees for $2 million for a pet project in Santa Ana, said the issue of benefits for immigrants is “a concern” for legislators in Washington. But, she added in an interview, she has seen no indication that all 52 members of the California congressional delegation would support restoration of food stamps for legal immigrants.

“Dream on,” Laurie True of California Food Policy Advocates, which tracks food policy, said of the possibility that Congress would reconsider the food stamp question.

A third of the 345,000 legal immigrants in California who have been receiving food stamps are children. The loss of food stamps would amount to the first and most direct impact on children of the federal welfare overhaul in the state.

“The Legislature needs to step up to the plate,” True said. “If [the immigrants] don’t get the benefits, they’re going to be hungry. . . . It is a lot of money. We don’t deny that. But we feel the money exists. What could be more important?”

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Word of the cost of a food stamp program came as lawmakers acknowledged, to the surprise of no one in the Capitol, that they would miss the June 15 deadline--Sunday--specified in the state Constitution that they have an approved budget on the governor’s desk.

The Legislature has not met that deadline since 1986. The state Constitution also requires that the governor sign a new budget into law by July 1, the start of the fiscal year. That deadline has been met only once in the 1990s.

The budget conference committee has not considered several major issues, including school funding and how the state intends to implement the federal welfare changes. Both issues will be taken up Monday when the conference committee reconvenes.