Late last Friday (9/29/06), Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 1674 (Murray) --a CSEA sponsored bill, that would have provided $37.8 million to school food service programs.
SB 1674 would have increased the reimbursement rate for free and reduced priced school meals from the current 15 cents to 21 cents and given a COLA’s to this program, which has not been increased in 14 years. The increase in SB 1674 is much needed and long overdue.
Even though this program is woefully under-funded and has been for years, the Governor vetoed the bill based on the pretense of a new policy on food preparation that far exceeds federal healthy food guidelines. The costs of these new policies far exceed the 6-cent reimbursement rate in the bill.
The veto of SB 1674 is bad for schools and hurts the children that the Governor claims to want to help.
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