Coalition releases plan to end U.S. child hunger by 2012

Today the New York City Coalition Against Hunger released a position paper cowritten by Executive Director Joel Berg and national political consultant Tom Freedman intended to spur an end to U.S. child hunger by 2012. The paper demonstrates the solveability of the problem, and points out that the tools for accomplishing this worthy goal are already available - all that is needed is the will to "break the political logjam," and combine these efforts in a targeted campaign.

Council not interested in Mayor's budget dance

Mayor Michael Bloomberg declined to include $300 million in funding for existing programs in his proposed city budget. Many in the New York City nonprofit community expressed disappointment at Bloomberg’s readiness to engage in the annual “budget dance,” a term used by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to describe the political maneuvering surrounding allocations. Said Coalition Against Hunger Executive Director Joel Berg, “Not only did the mayor fail to include funding for any of the anti-hunger initiatives proposed by Speaker Quinn, he actually called for [a] $670,000 cut in the Emergency Food Assistance Program.... We applaud Speaker Quinn and the Council for realizing that with millions of lives at stake, the budget process should not be a 'dance' but rather a serious process of meeting city needs."

Belated aid: Online food stamps apps to become available

Next December, one month later than mandated by the City Council last summer, New York City will allow hungry citizens to apply for food stamps online. New York has an unusually low rate of participation in the Food Stamps Program, which many credit to excessive bureaucratic red tape and problems with the in-person application process.

Quinn proposes EBT scanners at Greenmarkets

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn proposed allocating $81,000 out of the city budget to install EBT card scanners that would allow Greenmarkets—farmers’ markets in Brooklyn, Harlem, and the South Bronx—to accept food stamps. Few farmers have the scanners, which run about $1,000 each.