ST. LOUIS — After several high-profile cases of fraud that included ºüÀêÊÓƵ, state regulators will gain access to new oversight tools for childhood nutrition programs, a top U.S. Department of Agriculture official told the Post-Dispatch Tuesday.
Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, said a new federal rule ups monitoring requirements and requires more financial reporting from the nonprofits that operate the child nutrition programs, which distribute meals to low-income children in schools and during the summer. Another pending rule will clarify the process for removing “bad actors†or nonprofits that struggle to operate the programs.
In addition, she said USDA staff are working to give state regulators, who oversee the day-to-day operations of the meal distribution programs, new data monitoring tools to better track program participants and find red flags.
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“These programs are highly decentralized,†Long said in an interview. “You have family day care providers in their homes, you have little summer programs, maybe 40 to 60 kids all over the state. No one can be there all the time. But we can do a lot better at monitoring the information we do have, which is around the numbers of meals they’re serving, the claims, and empowering states much more strongly with those kind of tools.â€
The child nutrition programs — the Summer Food Service Program and Child and Adult Care Food Program — offer federal reimbursement to nonprofits and school districts that provide meals to low-income children. During the pandemic, the programs drew headlines for the wrong reasons.
In Minneapolis, federal prosecutors in 2022 charged nearly 50 people tied to nonprofit Feeding our Future for stealing some $250 million from the USDA’s child nutrition programs. Prosecutors said then it was the largest pandemic-era fraud scheme to date.
After a Post-Dispatch report, federal prosecutors in October charged the head of one Missouri nonprofit, Connie Bobo, for claiming some $11 million she wasn’t entitled to receive and using the money to buy property and luxury goods. Prosecutors a year ago also subpoenaed records on Influence Church, which also claimed tens of millions of dollars from the program and was the subject of a Post-Dispatch investigation, though charges were never filed.
Long said some of the fraud was due to pandemic-era conditions that curtailed state regulator visits to monitor the programs and allowed huge, drive-thru-style grab-and-go events where a week’s worth of meals could be distributed at once, allowing large claims.
“I certainly think it’s reasonable to say that the unique set of circumstances under COVID were kind of a perfect storm,†Long said. “It’s very distressing when you see these kind of alleged criminal activities. They also did get caught. There are mechanisms in place to deal with the folks who are truly undertaking criminal activity.â€
And, Long said, FNS doesn’t want to strangle the vast majority of nonprofits who are trying to provide a needed service to children.
“We are trying to hit the sweet spot,†she said. “A lot of the folks that operate these programs and operate them very well are small nonprofits that are committed to supporting the kids in their community.â€
Some of the problems with the programs were also tied to a waiver of rules requiring meals to be served in a congregate setting. Missouri made national headlines in 2022 for being the only state to pull out of that waiver after regulators grew concerned with massive claim numbers from some nonprofits.
Long said FNS did not want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater†on non-congregate meal distribution, and noted that Congress recently approved a non-congregate feeding option for rural areas.
“I’m confident that’s going to be a game-changer in those places where it’s just not feasible to bring kids together and you just don’t have a mechanism for a captive audience that you do during the school year,†Long said. “I do not think that non-congregate in and of itself represents a risk. It’s like anything else, you’ve just got to manage it properly.â€
Long was in ºüÀêÊÓƵ for the FNS-sponsored Healthy Meals Summit, part of its Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative. The program awarded $30 million in grants to rural school districts around the country for new equipment and initiatives to provide healthier food to school children. Awardees and others in the school lunch industry were invited to gather and share practices at one of three conferences, the first of which was in ºüÀêÊÓƵ this week. Four districts in the western portion of Missouri received grants.
The funding comes as a new final rule is nearly complete mandating healthier school meals, including by cutting sugar and salt.
The Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative, funded with American Rescue Plan Act money, will also soon award $52 million in grants to spur new partnerships between school districts and food producers.
“It’s the biggest single investment in school meals, outside of the reimbursement for the meals, in over 30 years,†Long said.