Sent to the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board, 12/3/2009

To the Editor:

As hunger soars and lines for help lengthen across our state, Texas clearly needs to invest in
better ways to feed the needy ("Let Texas use innovation to solve food stamp woes," 12/3).

However, insisting on wasteful requirements like finger-imaging hungry families won’t improve our
threadbare safety net.

Texas is one of only four states that refuse to end this vestigial practice, left over from an era
before computer-database matching and sixteen other methods of fraud detection gave us the
lowest rate of fraud in the program's history.

Last year, finger-imaging cost Texas taxpayers $3 million, yet uncovered just one case of fraud.
This waste of tax dollars led the former chair of the Conservative Coalition, Rep. Arlene
Wohlgemuth, to joint-author legislation that would have killed the requirement.

Inexplicably, the authors claim that HHSC is "mired in bureaucracy," yet continue to advocate for
this faded piece of red tape. It is high time for Texas to find a better way to address its growing
hungry population, but clinging to failed policy isn’t it.

JC Dwyer
State Policy Coordinator
Texas Food Bank Network