Show-Me Lunch Money MILLIONS Abandoned

This might be the worst food aid FAIL of 2023 and it deserves attention from locals as prices are rising at the grocery store and food insecurity is becoming VERY REAL for more people in Missouri.

Admittedly, this is a progressive rant but it should generate interest across party lines . . .

Roughly 356,000 Missouri kids qualify, putting some $42.7 million from the federal government on the table this year.

But Missouri will be leaving it there. The state is forgoing participation this year, after last year’s program here dragged into this summer due to the state’s inability to get the money where it needed to go.

No one should underestimate the mind-numbing level of bureaucracy necessary to administer a federal program — but other states managed it, most of them dispersing last year’s funds in just a few months last summer. Missouri government, however, with its outdated computer systems, needed to create a data portal from scratch to collect information on student eligibility and coordinate that data with state and federal agencies.

As a result, Missouri didn’t even get last year’s program up and running until this summer . . . The decision to bow out of this year’s program, a spokesperson for Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education told the news site, was based on “the federal requirements associated with accessing and administering the benefits … coupled with the limitations of our current state and local data collection systems.”

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com paywall link . . .

Editorial: Missouri fumbles $42M, again showing it's among the worst-run states in America

Editorial: If there are two defining characteristics of Missouri's Republican-run government, they are ideological extremism and governmental incompetence.