Policy is moving quickly in the midst of state legislative session! Even between drafting and sharing our most recent Nourish Spring newsletter, policy updates have changed. You can find the latest information and corrections to the policy section of the March newsletter here.
State Legislative Updates – Healthy Food Incentive Fund
The Healthy Food Incentives Program bill has now been introduced as a Joint Budget Committee (JBC) orbital bill (HB24-1416) and has already passed second reading in the House of Representatives chamber. Next, the bill has to make it through the third reading in the House, all the three readings in the Senate chamber, and then finally be signed by the Governor in the Long Bill to become law. As a reminder, if it passes, the bill will make the Healthy Food Incentive Fund (HFIF) a permanent program in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). The HFIF funds produce incentive programs such as Double Up Food Bucks and produce boxes for WIC families and older adults.
State Legislative Updates – Time to Eat
The Time to Eat bill, HB24-1301 Noncurricular Time Programs, is also making progress in the state legislative session. The bill has its first reading in the House Education Committee this Thursday. To remind you of the bill’s purpose, if passed, the bill would create a task force of students, parents, teachers, cafeteria staff, food service directors, school board members, and others. The task force would study best practices, barriers, and opportunities of extending school lunch periods and develop recommendations to ensure that students have enough time to eat their high-quality, nutritious school meals.
State Updates – Universal School Meals
The JBC has also made some important decisions around Healthy School Meals for All and the Local Food Program through another orbital bill, HB24-1390. The JBC voted to use State Education Funds to pay for the gap in funding for universal school meals for both this school year and next school year, while deciding to pause implementation of the grant programs—wage stipends for cafeteria staff, the statewide Local Food Program, and the expanded Local Food Program training and technical assistance grant.
However, while the expanded statewide Local Food Program (LFP) has been delayed for the foreseeable future, the JBC did also vote to continue the pilot version of LFP for one more year. The pilot version will continue the program at the same level it has been funded at for the first three years of the pilot program, which is $500,000 for local food incentives and $150,000 for training and technical assistance. Although we are disappointed and disheartened by this drastic loss in expected funding, as we all expected LFP to provide up to $9 million for local food incentives and $5 million for training and technical assistance starting this August, we are relieved that the program has not been fully paused, as proposed originally.
Federal Updates
On the federal policy side, the nation is still waiting for a farm bill draft to be introduced and hopefully passed soon. But there are some updates around our federal budget. The fiscal year 2024 (FY24) budget has finally been passed! We were happy to see that this budget fully funded the WIC program (Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) and kept the pandemic-level boost to the Cash Value Benefit fruit and vegetable dollars for WIC participants. We were disappointed to see the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) funded much less than previous years, but we are not sure yet how or if this will affect Colorado’s FMNP.
Since this FY24 budget was much past due (it has been delayed since October 1, 2023), it is already now time to be advocating for the FY25 budget. The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2025 has been released with recommendations from each agency. We are working with our federal delegation to uplift our budgetary and farm bill reauthorization priorities.
