In South Carolina’s Richland County, where about 67,000 of the 440,000 residents — nearly half of them children — receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, local food bank representatives have told Columbia Mayor Dan Rickenmann they won’t be able to absorb heightened demand following cuts to SNAP made in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
If the city has to step in and help, “we’d have to reevaluate where we’re spending money,” potentially taking funds away from initiatives like transitional and supportive housing for the local homeless population, Rickenmann told Smart Cities Dive.
Rickenmann saw firsthand last fall how the pause in SNAP benefits during the federal government shutdown affected residents. “This past November opened up a lot of people’s eyes,” he said. “Where they worshipped, where they worked, they saw people talking about” the personal impact of SNAP funding cuts.
Rickenmann is among a bipartisan group of 210 U.S. mayors who sent a letter urging senators to “protect and strengthen” SNAP as the U.S. Senate considers an update to the Farm Bill, which authorizes appropriations for the program. He’s one of more than 100 mayors from states that voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election to sign the letter. “This is not a partisan issue,” he said.
The July 20 letter from the U.S. Conference of Mayors cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data that more than 4 million people across the U.S. have lost SNAP benefits since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was enacted in July 2025. It calls for senators to reverse the SNAP cuts in the bill and delay its requirement that states pay 25% more in SNAP program administrative costs starting in October, noting that this will “impose unsustainable fiscal burdens on states and localities.”
In response to the bill’s requirement that each state must pay a percentage of its SNAP benefit costs based on the state’s SNAP payment error rate beginning in October 2027, the letter asks senators to “treat all states equitably by extending the benefit-cost shift delay to fiscal year 2030 for all states, to allow time to improve payment error rates and budget for increased costs to the states.”
While Rickenmann “100% supports folks doing audits” on SNAP administration at the state level, he said rising food, fuel and housing costs are making SNAP funds even more vital for Columbia residents.
“I feel like the general public wants to support programs that are run well but also make a difference,” he said. “I hear ‘make commonsense decisions that are good for the people,’ and that is what SNAP is — a commonsense decision.”
Allentown, Pennsylvania, also faces SNAP-related budget issues, said Mayor Matt Tuerk, who signed the USCM letter. When SNAP benefits were paused last fall, Tuerk told Smart Cities Dive there were secondary effects his city hadn’t anticipated.
“It started to have an impact on people’s mental health,” he said. “Our police chief has concerns about what families will do when they have to make decisions about putting food on the table. Will they turn to retail theft?”
Tuerk is also worried about how lack of access to nutritious food could affect residents’ physical health and how that might impact the city budget. “We’re the one running the ambulances that take people to emergency rooms,” he said.
Allentown’s small businesses could also be affected, Tuerk said, especially the bodegas that rely on customers using SNAP benefits. “Those SNAP dollars help run our city economy,” he said.
