Legislators File Surge of Bills to Fight Hunger : Social services: Many seek to make federal food programs more accessible to low-income children. An opponent says such measures just ‘feed bureaucracy.’

State legislators have introduced a flurry of bills seeking to stem what they see as unacceptable rates of hunger among children in California--a state where the government has found that more than 1 million low-income youngsters suffer from anemia, a condition linked to poor nutrition.

Among the eight bills introduced in recent weeks in the California Legislature is an urgency measure scheduled for a vote today in the Senate that would make funds to launch breakfast programs available to an additional 300 California schools. Currently, about 4,500 schools offer on-campus breakfast; about 3,900 do not.

The anti-hunger proposals reflect a surge in interest by state politicians. California Council of Churches Executive Director Patricia Whitney-Wise has had three times the usual number of legislators ask about sponsoring anti-hunger bills; many, she said, were motivated by a recent Times series about hunger. “People are knocking down our doors to sponsor bills,” said Marion Standish, co-director of California Food Policy Advocates, a hunger lobbying group.

But other state legislators promise to battle the proposed bills--many of which seek to make federal food programs more accessible to children in low-income families--saying that efforts to create a more activist government role in feeding people are dangerously flawed and run counter to November’s electoral mandate. California politicians, they say, should instead be working in lock-step with the new GOP-controlled House of Representatives’ “contract with America,” which aims to slash spending for welfare and nutrition programs, reduce dependency and the deficit, and promote more parental responsibility.

“These types of bills don’t feed a single person. They feed a bureaucracy,” said Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside), who plans to vote against the breakfast measure today. He says the government must curtail traditional assistance programs and allow charity to assume an increased role. “They say there are all these starving people out there who don’t know what programs are available to them. I, quite frankly, don’t believe it.”

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Haynes acknowledged, however, that some people have trouble putting food on the table regularly. Indeed, some researchers have found that 30 million Americans go hungry, often skipping meals with their children for lack of resources. Many don’t participate in federal anti-hunger programs, such as food stamps; for some of those who do, the amounts allocated by the government often aren’t enough to feed a family for the whole month. Church-sponsored food pantries help some, but are being forced to limit their assistance and turn away many requests for help.

Among the bills proposed in the California Legislature is a measure requiring that applications for food stamps--which 27 million Americans receive--be available not only in welfare offices (some of which close by 2 p.m.) but also in unemployment offices, homeless shelters and nonprofit food pantries. Almost 69% of eligible Americans received food stamps in 1992, the most recent figure available, but two-thirds of the eligible elderly and more than half of the working poor go without, according to a USDA-sponsored study.

Another bill would fund snacks for after-school recreational programs. Although the bill does not specify exactly which foods would be offered, they would fall within USDA nutrition guidelines for snacks, its sponsors said. Five others are aimed at reducing childhood anemia by, among other things, requiring that so-called WIC clinics--government centers that give pregnant women and young children coupons for milk and food supplements and nutritional advice--have evening and Saturday hours to help working mothers participate.

The breakfast bill up for a vote today would allow schools where 30% or more of children are low-income to apply for grants of up to $10,000 to buy refrigerators and other equipment often needed to tap into federally funded breakfast programs. The current standard is 40% or higher.

“This would cover communities that are basically middle class but have pockets of poverty, not just the schools in ghetto areas,” said Sen. Lucy Killea, (I-San Diego) who has authored the bill as a way to encourage more schools to serve a morning meal. “Study after study shows that children who are hungry have more learning, attendance and disciplinary problems,” Killea said. “This is a small price to pay to further the education of those who are our future.”

Because Killea’s bill is an urgency measure--if approved by the Assembly and signed by the governor it would take effect immediately, not at the end of the year--it requires a two-thirds majority vote. Last week, it failed to win approval by three votes but was granted a second chance today.

The actions in the California Legislature come as Washington is preoccupied with the “contract with America.” The House Republicans’ blueprint for action eliminates 10 federal food and nutrition programs--including food stamps and school lunch and breakfast--that have traditionally enjoyed broad bipartisan support. It instead turns responsibility for the programs over to the states. By allocating funding to states in a lump sum, the programs’ budgets would no longer be allowed to expand--as they now do--to meet the burgeoning numbers of eligible applicants in times of recession and rising poverty rates. Such cuts are one of the primary vehicles House Republicans have proposed to finance welfare reform.

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Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) said that despite the sentiment in Washington, she believes most of the anti-hunger measures in Sacramento will pass because of common-sense considerations. “You can reduce funding for these programs, and the problems will pop up somewhere else. If kids go hungry, they can’t concentrate, they drop out of school, they are on the street or our emergency rooms,” said Watson.

As chairwoman of the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, Watson has scheduled legislative hearings next Wednesday to address how legislators can reduce childhood anemia in California. Among the speakers: Ernesto Pollitt, a UC Davis human development professor, whose 1993 study found that anemic and iron-deficient toddlers lag behind their peers in mental development by up to 25%.

In the next few weeks, the Senate Office of Research will release a six-month study it commissioned from the University of California’s Policy Seminar detailing how many people in the state skip meals and go hungry for lack of food, a report that is expected to generate additional legislation. In March and April, Los Angeles’ Volunteer Advisory Council on Hunger, a nine-member group formed last fall by mayoral and city appointees, will hold six days of hearings throughout Los Angeles to devise a citywide hunger policy.

Haynes, who plans to vote against the breakfast bill today, said he is concerned about too much government intervention. “It doesn’t necessarily take government to feed people,” said Haynes, adding that he once helped collect groceries for 500 people. Saying that welfare dependency is like heroin and emphasizing that it’s “hard to go cold turkey,” he said federal funding will be supplanted by private efforts.

“I believe in the American people. They will give the appropriate amount of money and rise to the occasion,” Haynes said. “We shouldn’t spend money on cupcakes and Ho-Hos for after-school snack programs. I’d like snacks, too. Should the taxpayers be paying for that?”