Mark Leno took advantage of his place on the budget conference committee to propose eliminating the costly finger imaging system through the budget process rather than through the legislative process. The removal of the finger imaging system will take place if Governer Shwartzenegger signs off on the budget in the next few weeks.

It seems that two solid weeks of hearings about devistating cuts to health and human services prepared the Budget Conference Committee to make the decision it made today – to get rid of the costly and inefficient finger imaging system as a way to help balance the budget without restricting Californians’ access to the social service programs they need now more than ever!

Mandatory finger imaging for food stamp recipants was put in place by legislation in 1996 but did not get implemented statewide until 2000. Even though the legislation did not include it, SFIS takes a photograph in addition to a finger image. The process, designed to deter welfare fraud, created detering barriers to many low-income Californians who qualified for food stamps.

Tags: budget cuts, food stamps, mark leno, sacramento, schwarzenegger

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.