$200 per child for school supplies: The Real Deal
Last Update: 8/13 8:07 pm
Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - Welfare and food stamp recipients Wednesday started getting letters in the mail letting them know extra money they received in their benefit payments this month, is supposed to be used to buy school supplies for their kids.
The problem is, the money was available on their cards Tuesday, and local retailers tell us they were swamped with people cashing in.
The owners of the Sunoco on the corner of Wolf and Grant Street in Syracuse were swamped Tuesday; food stamp recipients, they say, who found an extra $200 per child on their benefit cards, were coming in to cash in.
?One person said she was going to buy a cell phone, I said ?Wow, I thought the money was supposed to be for the kids -- other people were just buying cigarettes and beer,? says Sunoco gas station owner Diane Goly.
It's very possible most of those people didn't even know this cash that mysteriously appeared on their cards was supposed to be used to buy school supplies for their children -- the letters from the state telling them that were still in the mail.
Governor Paterson announced at a press conference Tuesday that he was using $140 million in stimulus money to fund this program -- but prior to that, it seems he kept this allocation close to the vest.
?We hadn't done a lot of planning for it because we didn't know about it,? says Ann Rooney of Onondaga County Human Services.
Social Services had no say in the program or how the cash was distributed; they just learned about it last week and were told not to say anything about it to the public until Tuesday, when the governor announced the program at a press conference.
?We would have liked to have been involved in the process and have some input,? says Rooney.
Congressman Dan Maffei says, ?The Governor gave me no heads up that they were going to do this, so this is a program that the state is implementing without the input of at least our congressional office.?
State Republicans claim the governor developed this plan in secret with no legislative input and it's ripe for fraud and abuse.
We tried speaking with the governor's office Wednesday about this, and they deferred us to the Office of Temporary Assistance.
They admit the letters should have gone out well in advance of the money, but there was a lot of overhead and they wanted to make sure the cash was out before school started.
With the governor's plan, there's no accountability. His office is just hoping folks do the right thing and spend the extra cash on their kids.
Rooney thinks there may have been a better way to ensure that.
?Perhaps we could have done something with Mary Nelson, who's having her barbecue this weekend and put some of the money in her hands to supplement what she's doing with the backpack giveaway,? she says.
Nelson says she found out about the money and says she?s heard of people using it on other items rather than on their children.
It shocks her, but she says it?s not the children?s fault and that she?ll still help them.
?Maybe those parents should come by and bring some of those supplies, and feel bad for what they did,? Nelson says.
She wishes she could have received at least some of that money; with just days left before the Youth Day Barbecue, she still needs enough supplies to fill up 1,000 backpacks.
She also says she needs about 2,000 backpacks for folks who may not have signed up.
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