Commissioner Nikki Fried to Governor DeSantis: Immediately Apply for $820M in Available Federal Food Assistance for Florida Children

Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried called on Governor Ron DeSantis to immediately apply for the nearly $820 million in federal food assistance that is available for Florida children.

“There is simply no reason why you should have ended – or be so far behind in securing – this critical federal assistance for our children that is being provided at no cost to the state,” Commissioner Fried wrote a letter sent Wednesday. “The people of Florida cannot afford for you to leave money on the table, especially when it means leaving food off their tables.”

Commissioner Fried’s call comes on the heels of troubling reports that Governor DeSantis’s administration has failed to apply for the Summer Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program, which would help provide meals for an estimated 2.1 million children in Florida.

The letter, which may be downloaded here, reads as follows:

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The Honorable Ron DeSantis
Governor
The Capitol
400 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

August 25, 2021

Governor DeSantis,

It has come to my attention that your administration is failing to take advantage of, or moving slowly to disburse, federal resources available to assist our state including $850 million in pandemic assistance for renters, $7 billion in American Rescue Plan school funding for Florida, and the $300 weekly assistance for unemployed Floridians that you elected to end prematurely.

Now we have learned that your administration has failed to apply for nearly $820 million in federal food assistance for two million Florida children through the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program. There is simply no reason why you should have ended – or be so far behind in securing – this critical federal assistance for our children that is being provided at no cost to the state.

As you may recall, my Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services worked with your Department of Children and Families to design the P-EBT program that delivered more than $1 billion in crucial food assistance to low-income families during the 2020-2021 school year. Yet when the U.S. Department of Agriculture extended the program in April, your administration failed to apply for summer funding, leaving the families of more than two million children without hundreds of dollars in nutrition assistance.

Summer nutrition assistance is especially important to help keep children from going hungry when schools are closed, given that 71 percent of Florida students qualify for free or reduced-price meals through the national school lunch and breakfast programs administered by my department. Failing to secure these funds also increases strain and demand on our state’s food banks, non-profits, and faith-based organizations already stretched by this pandemic.

These failures follow a troubling pattern of inaction from your administration. Last year, I asked you several times to use CARES Act funding to support school nutrition shortfalls; after you declined to do so, my department worked with the USDA to secure $93 million in school nutrition funding for Florida’s schools.

Thankfully, the Summer P-EBT funding can be applied retroactively, so your administration still has an opportunity to do what’s right, albeit late. I am calling on you to immediately apply for the $819.8 million in Summer P-EBT funding still available to our state, and to provide an update on this at the next scheduled meeting of the Florida Cabinet.

The people of Florida cannot afford for you to leave money on the table, especially when it means leaving food off their tables.

Sincerely,
Nicole Fried
Commissioner of Agriculture

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