Food and Nutrition Service December 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is adopting as a final rule, without change, a direct final rule that made changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) regulations to account for the replacement of the paper coupon issuance system with the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system as the nationwide method of distributing benefits to program participants. This action is in accordance with the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, Public Law 110-246, (the 2008 Farm Bill) which prohibited State agencies from issuing paper food stamp coupons and made EBT cards the sole method of benefit delivery. The 2008 Farm Bill also de-obligated paper coupons as legal tender as of June 18, 2009. Therefore, paper coupons no longer have any value and can no longer be redeemed at any store. In line with EBT implementation and the elimination of coupons, these changes remove coupon issuance and EBT pilot regulations that are no longer applicable, revise regulatory language to more appropriately reflect the new EBT issuance system and the Program's new name, and reorganize sections to develop a more cohesive set of issuance regulations.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice invites the general public and other public agencies to comment on this proposed collection. This is a new collection for the contract Assessing the Effect of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Participation on Food Security in the Post-American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Environment.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipient claims are established and collected against households that receive more benefits than they are entitled to receive. This rulemaking corrects and clarifies provisions of the final rule on recipient claims published at 65 FR 41752 on July 6, 2000. The purposes of this final rulemaking are to remove a definition and several provisions that were made obsolete by the final rule; correct the typographical errors; correct the omission of the requirement that a copy of the claims management plan be submitted to the FNS Regional Office for informational purposes; reinforce current practices and requirements in the areas of fair hearings, fees, due dates, delinquent claims, retention, claim referrals, negligence and fraud; make conforming changes needed as a result of a subsequent rulemaking pertaining to a sponsor's responsibility for overissuances of an alien household; and to remove an overpayment exception that is no longer applicable to the Program.