Imagine if the state issued just one driver’s license per family and continued to prohibit people from driving without a state-issued driver’s license. Needless to say, state lawmakers wouldn’t subject themselves and their families to that sort of extremely problematic approach to requiring a photo ID for driving.  Yet a bill that got a public hearing today could result in an analogous photo ID requirement for the FoodShare program (which is also known as food stamps or SNAP).

The bill in question, AB 222, would direct the WI Dept. of Health Services (DHS) to seek a waiver from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) allowing DHS to require FoodShare recipients to use electronic benefit transfer (cards containing a photo ID. The bill doesn’t explicitly require that such a plan would only allow one card per household, though that seems to be the intent, and allowing multiple cards per household might increase rather than decrease the potential for the cards to end up in the wrong hands and be misused.

Obtaining a federal waiver to implement a photo ID requirement for Food Share benefits is highly improbable because such a requirement is likely to violate a number of federal regulations. Those rules require that a FoodShare household has the right to designate a family member or nonmember to use the ID card to purchase food for the household.  The FoodShare household is authorized by federal regulations to designate a trusted relative, friend or social agency to shop for them.

Another significant impediment is that retailers are prohibited from treating FoodShare participants differently than other customers, which means that if retailers were required to check the photo on FoodShare cards they would have to ask for identification of all customers using a debit or credit card.

Yet even if a federal waiver could be obtained, the bill is an ill-advised way to tackle the goal of reducing fraudulent use of FoodShare cards.  When fraud occurs, retailers are often complicit.  Requiring the use of a card with a photo ID won’t detect and deter retailers who are already enabling the fraud to occur.

Because the bill would do little to deter fraud, the expense is a major drawback.  According to the fiscal estimate produced by DHS, the photo ID requirement would cost $7.4 million to initiate and then $2 million per year to administer.

The Hunger Task Force sums up the problems with the photo ID legislation as follows:

“AB 222 is costly, unenforceable and won’t reduce fraud. It creates a burden on businesses and is a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

To read more about AB 222, you can find the arguments of the bill’s author, Rep. Jesse Kremer, in this press release.  Arguments opposing the photo ID bill, and also opposing a bill relating to penalties for “fraudulently” receiving unemployment insurance benefits (AB 212), can be found in this press release from Rep. Andy Jorgensen.

Jon Peacock