Springfield Kills Bill Requiring Photo IDs On Link Cards

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Mar 22, 2013 7:20PM

Earlier this week the Illinois Senate once again tabled legislation that would require photo identification to be added to all LINK Cards.

The bill's frustrated sponsor State Sen. Chapin Rose (R - Mahomet) has been advocating for photo IDs on LINK Cards, which are issued to low-income Illinoisans in lieu of food stamps, for years as a way to keep them from being used by anyone other than the cardholder, sold to others for cash, or used to purchase cigarettes and alcohol, which is verboten.

Rose has run into stiff opposition from the retail lobby, poverty and hunger groups and Democratic lawmakers who say the bill stigmatizes the poor. Nearly 880,000 Illinoisans had LINK cards for food stamps or cash assistance as of 2011 but Rose, who said he grew up in a needy family, said he’s simply trying to cut the abuse.

“The going rate for Link card benefits in my neighborhood is 50 cents on the dollar. People are selling their Link cards for cash — or worse — drugs,” Rose said. “That’s my constituents’ tax dollars being wasted. Handing a drug addict a couple hundred bucks a week to buy smack doesn’t help them, either.”

Rose’s bill would call for the state Department of Human Services to give the General Assembly an estimate on how much it would cost to replace LINK cards with ones bearing the holder’s name and photo.. Such a move would also require a waiver from the federal government. The Senate Human Services Committee forwarded the bill to a subcommittee along with four other GOP-sponsored bills.