GOP threat ends Kansas governor's food assistance extension

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Thursday dropped a policy that allowed several thousand Kansas adults to keep receiving food assistance after failing to meet a work requirement, reversing course days after the state's Republican attorney general threatened to file a lawsuit.

Kelly continued to defend the change made by the state Department for Children and Families in May on humanitarian and legal grounds. Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature argue that it violated a 2015 law enacted under conservative GOP Gov. Sam Brownback that imposed a work requirement and other restrictions on food and cash assistance recipients.

The department provided food assistance in July for 5,500 adults who were supposed to have it cut off because they weren't meeting the work requirement and planned to do so again in August and September. Attorney General Derek Schmidt told Kelly in a letter Monday that if she did not drop the policy, he was prepared to go to court to challenge it.

"While my team believes the policy we put in place is legally defensible, we have determined that it isn't worth the cost to Kansas taxpayers to engage in a protracted court battle," Kelly said during a Statehouse news conference.

Read more: https://www.nhregister.com/news/crime/article/GOP-threat-ends-Kansas-governor-s-food-assistance-14089067.php
(New Haven Register)