Court Rejects Secrecy For Food Stamp Numbers

[Purveyor]

JOSH GERSTEIN | 1/28/14 12:30 PM EST

A federal appeals court has rejected the Obama Administration's attempt to keep secret the government's data on how much individual retailers take in from the food stamp program.

In a ruling Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit turned down the U.S. Department of Agriculture's arguments that a provision in federal law protecting retailers' application information from disclosure also barred disclosure of how much the feds pay out to specific businesses.

"Because the retailer spending information is not 'submit[ted]' by 'an applicant retail food store or wholesale food concern...' the information is not exempt from disclosure. The department, not any retailer, generates the information, and the underlying data is 'obtained' from third-party payment processors, not from individual retailers," Chief Judge William Jay Riley wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Steven Colloton and Jane Kelly.

The judges acted on an appeal filed by South Dakota's Argus Leader newspaper after the USDA turned down the paper's Freedom of Information Act request for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments to individual retailers on an annual basis from 2005 to 2010. A district court judge agreed with the federal government's argument that part of the food stamp program statute barred such disclosure, making the data exempt from FOIA.

Riley's nine-page opinion (posted here) reads the statute differently and also makes references to the public interest in disclosure of the information given both growth and fraud in the food stamp program.

MORE...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/01/court-rejects-secrecy-for-food-stamp-numbers-182072.html

[jwirr]

1. Why did they want to keep it secret? Grocery stores etc get a lot of money through this program. It

helps their business.

[seveneyes]

2. Everything except top secret should be transparent

Why on Earth would our government try to keep infrastructure or social costs like these a secret?

[woo me with science]

3. A$ though we need to a$k that que$tion these day$.

Most transparent administration in history, my ass. We are sold to corporate interests, and the people be damned.

[haele]

4. Retailer fraud?

If big retailers (Walmart, Krogers, et al), who are getting the EBT or food subsidy stamp refunds from the government are able to somehow cook the books to get more, their lobbyists will be pushing hard at the DoA not to let use data become public.
Likewise, if the government agency on the retail side doesn't have appropriate oversight, or has a lot of "shortcuts" for dealing with the big retailers, that would be something they don't want to have out in the public.

The data for people getting food stamps is out there - income levels, family sizes, etc. The majority of fraud and waste in pretty much every social assistance program where there is some sort government payment to a provider involved (i.e. Food stamps, Section 8, Medicaid) is typically found in the back end - where the commercial and private companies get the government subsidies for handling the assistance.

People don't usually think about the accounting tricks that can be used to cheat the government when they think about food stamp fraud. It's far easier to blame some stereotypical minority single stay-at-home mom of five or six kids with a boyfriend d'jour than it is to blame the government subsidies accounts receivable department of Walmart South-East division or whatever company they outsourced their handling of SNAP, WIC, EBT and Food Stamps to.

Haele

[seveneyes]

6. Good point

I suspect most fraud committed for government money is by professionals, not individuals.

[WillyT]

5. K & R !!!