The Food Depot Advocacy Agenda 2023

 The Food Depot’s Agenda for the

2023 Regular Legislative Session

Approved by The Food Depot Board of Directors on January 18, 2023

The Food Depot respectfully requests that you and your colleagues provide crucial help to

our efforts by taking the following seven actions:

ACTION ONE: SUPPORT INCREASED, RECURRING FUNDING FOR FOOD BANKS

Repeat the 2022 appropriation of $1,116,500 for food banks to purchase and distribute fresh

produce, and appropriate an additional $10 million per the Food Initiative for food banks to

acquire more of the self-stable food hungry New Mexicans need. Because there is no end in

sight to the need for this funding, it should be made recurring.

ACTION TWO: SUPPORT UNIVERSAL FREE SCHOOL MEALS

Approximately 20 percent of our state’s children are food insecure. An important way to

reduce their hunger will be to enact legislation to provide universal free school meals. This

will ensure that, when schools are open, every child can receive a nutritious breakfast and

lunch and, in some cases, an afternoon snack or meal before going home. A child should only

have to worry about school rather than worry about going hungry and feeling ‘less than’ their

peers. Making these meals free to all children will end the costly and frustrating

administration of means tests for children’s families. It will reduce ostracism of children

whose family incomes permit them to eat free while children from families with higher

incomes must pay something to eat. And it will reduce non-participation by children whose

families lack the money to pay even the low co-payments required and by those who don’t

want to be seen as participants in a “welfare” or “handout” program.

ACTION THREE: LEAVE FOOD EXEMPT FROM TAX

Leave food exempt from the gross receipts tax. Taxing food will directly reduce the food that

can be purchased by poor New Mexicans who already are experiencing hunger, and already-

strained food banks will not be able to make up difference. Make no mistake: taxing food will

increase hunger in our state.

ACTION FOUR: INCREASE SNAP BENEFITS FOR SENIORS

Approve a $225 per month allocation to up to 42,287 seniors in the state’s augmentation of

the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) benefit received

by New Mexico’s poor senior citizens. Seniors are increasingly hard-pressed to meet their

essential living expenses in the face of inflation, and this will reduce the number of them who

face food insecurity.

ACTION FIVE: ELIMINATE THE ANTI-DONATION CLAUSE FOR FOOD BANKS

When the Legislature provides funding intended to help food banks meet the increasing

costs of feeding hungry New Mexicans and, in order to comply with the restrictions of the

Anti-Donation Clause, the recipient food banks must obtain those funds from various local

governments, the funds are delayed in reaching the food banks by a host of administrative

requirements and sometimes never realize their intended purpose of preventing hunger.

Some 2022 funding has not yet reached the food banks for which it was appropriated.

Application of the Anti-Donation Clause to established nonprofit organizations involved in

feeding hungry New Mexicans should be eliminated. Until that is accomplished, State

funding for food banks should be channeled to them by means of contracts from state

agencies rather than grants they must obtain from local governments.

ACTION SIX: ELIMINATE GROSS RECEIPTS TAX ON SERVICES FOR FOOD BANKS

Currently, 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations like food banks do not pay gross receipts tax

on tangibles they purchase and yet do have to pay gross receipts tax on services, making New

Mexico gross receipts tax law different from most other states. Please support the end of GRT

on services.

ACTION SEVEN: SUPPORT FOR A MEMORIAL FOR HUNTERS HELPING THE HUNGRY

We urge your support for a Memorial calling on the appropriate state agencies to simplify

and clarify their requirements and procedures to facilitate donations by hunters of game

animals they have killed, and safe processing of the meat obtained from those game animals

so it can be used by food banks to feed hungry New Mexicans across the state.