For Immediate Release: Tuesday, April 19, 2016
From the office of Montgomery County Council Vice President Roger Berliner:
A bill that would require a strategic plan to end “food insecurity” in Montgomery County was introduced today before the County Council. Council Vice President Roger Berliner is the lead sponsor of Bill 19-16 and Councilmembers George Leventhal and Craig Rice are the co-sponsors. All three Councilmembers also are members of the Council’s Health and Human Services Committee, which oversees funding for programs that address food insecurity.
Bill to end ‘Food Insecurity’ introduced
before Montgomery County Council
Lead sponsor Roger Berliner seeks long-term strategic plan
to reduce food insecurity by at least 10 percent each year
ROCKVILLE, Md., April 19, 2016—A bill that would require a strategic plan to end “food insecurity” in Montgomery County was introduced today before the County Council. Council Vice President Roger Berliner is the lead sponsor of Bill 19-16 and Councilmembers George Leventhal and Craig Rice are the co-sponsors. All three Councilmembers also are members of the Council’s Health and Human Services Committee, which oversees funding for programs that address food insecurity.
In an April 14 memo to their colleagues seeking support for the bill, Councilmembers Berliner, Leventhal and Rice wrote, “Currently, 77,780 individuals in our County are food insecure, meaning that at any given point in time, they do not know where their next meal will come from. In a County as wealthy as ours, that is simply unacceptable.”
Prior to introduction of the bill and in preparation for the Council’s Fiscal Year 2017 Operating Budget deliberations, Council Vice President Berliner asked the County’s Office of Management and Budget to put together an inventory showing all of the programs that receive government funding to address food insecurity in the County.
“What the inventory makes abundantly clear,” states the memo, “is that, while our County has an array of programming to address food insecurity, administered by various government departments and nonprofit organizations, what we are lacking to the detriment of those 77,780 individuals is a strategic plan for our County to follow as we seek to address and ultimately eliminate food insecurity in our County.
“Our County needs a plan—a plan we own. We believe that plan should, at a minimum, strive to reduce food insecurity by at least 10 percent a year. We will need data. And we will need our community partners to work together. That is why we are introducing this legislation, which would mandate the creation of a strategic plan for addressing food insecurity.”
To that end, the bill would require consultation with many organizations inside and outside of County government. In particular, the legislation would require County officials to work closely with the Montgomery County Food Council in developing the strategic plan.
The strategic plan, which would have to be delivered to the Council by Dec. 1, would include relevant demographic and geographic information on poverty and food insecurity and also would include a five-year plan to reduce food insecurity by at least 10 percent each year. In addition, the bill requires that the plan include recommendations in the first year of implementation to reduce food insecurity for seniors and children. It also would require cost estimates to implement that plan.
A public hearing on the bill is tentatively scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on June 14. Funding for the strategic plan is expected to be discussed by the Council in the coming weeks as part of its overall Fiscal Year 2017 Operating Budget deliberations.
A copy of the above mentioned memo to colleagues and inventory are attached.
# # # #