Oregon gets $5 million bonus for food stamp “performance”

by NW Spotlight

The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) put out a press release this week announcing that Oregon is getting a $5 million bonus for signing up more people on food stamps and for signing them up faster.

Oregon also won a competitive two-year grant to pilot signing up people on food stamps without first interviewing them, according to the press release.

The press release supports a food stamp fact reported by Oregon Catalyst in August: 1 in 5 Oregonians is on food stamps. That’s 785,000 Oregonians on food stamps.

A May 2011 article in the Huffington Post showed that Oregon has the second highest use of food stamps in the nation, behind only Mississippi.