In a letter dated Monday, Maine Commissioner of Health and Human Services Mary Mayhew is petitioning the state’s congressional delegation for their help in reforming federal welfare laws.

“The people of Maine are concerned about the proliferation of welfare benefits and the seeming lack of reasonable limits on their use,” Mayhew wrote in the letter. “We have taken major steps toward reforming Maine’s welfare system where possible, but there is a limit to what we can do without action from the federal government.”

Mayhew sent the letter four days after receiving word from the federal government that the state was at risk of losing roughly $9 million in federal funding for the administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as “food stamps.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services division, the agency responsible for the oversight of SNAP, says several changes are necessary to the state’s new photo ID requirement for food stamp recipients to keep it from running afoul of federal guidelines. FNS also says the current implementation of the photo ID component could represent a civil rights violation.

Mayhew and the feds have clashed over the new program since April. She and Gov. Paul LePage say the photo ID requirement will help ensure the integrity of the program and prevent illegal trafficking of electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, cards — the debit-like system used by welfare recipients to access SNAP funds and other benefits.

Undeterred, DHHS implemented the photo ID requirement statewide in June, after a brief test run in the Bangor area in April.

Advocates for low-income Mainers have pointed to the relatively low number of verifiable instances of fraud and abuse in the EBT system, and argued that the new requirements will cause fewer eligible poor people to access the food assistance program.

Mayhew’s letter was addressed to Maine’s two U.S. senators, Republican Susan Collins and independent

Angus King, and to Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree and Republican Rep.- elect Bruce Poliquin.

Mayhew also included a list of 15 recommendations for SNAP reform that she had presented earlier this month to the State Human Services Secretaries’ Innovation Group, a collection of like-minded public welfare chiefs from around the country.

The list included recommendations for federal reforms that would greatly increase the state’s ability to limit the use and accessibility of SNAP funds. FOR MORE, visit Bangor Daily

News at www.BangorDailyNews.com.