Ed Fitzgerald fumbles again.
Earlier this year, Ohio revised its eligibility requirements for food stamps. If you don’t have dependents and aren’t disabled, you must be employed or in a job training program in order to receive food stamps.
Which makes perfect sense, of course. I have always worked a job since the age of 14. I’ve bagged groceries, flipped burgers, worked in libraries and waited tables. Were they fun jobs? No. But it was an honest paycheck. If you are an able bodied adult, you should be working or getting training for work.
In any case, on Thursday at a press conference, Ed Fitzgerald complained that “we were given almost no notice that the state was going to change its policy.”
He went on to lament that Cuyahoga County now has to “scramble” to make sure 29,000 people remain eligible and might incur overtime expenses to make that happen.
Ed is lying. The County was notified two and a half months ago. From Ron Regan of WEWS News:
But a news release dated September 6, 2013 from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, the state agency that oversees Ohio’s food stamp program, outlined key changes.
“Beginning October 1, 2013,” the release said, ” county departments of job and family services will have three months to ensure that able-bodied adults without dependents are attending a qualifying work or training program for at least 20 hours each week.”
But Joseph Gaunter, Administrator of Cuyahoga County’s Department of Jobs and Family Services, concedes the county was “aware” that changes would be implemented as far back as the end of August.”
So Ed lied. Shocker, huh?
Why is it the county’s responsibility to go out and hold people’s hands anyway? Why does the county have to scramble? It’s time for adults to start acting like adults and start working. Even if it’s bagging groceries. God forbid they might not have big daddy government there to buy food for them AND go out of it’s way to make sure they are aware of the requirements.
