SUN Bucks program provides grocery funds for children

(The Center Square) – When a state has no approved budget, a governor looks to do what he has to do, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein told state leaders Tuesday. There is a federal program, SUN Bucks, which provides $120 per child for groceries in the summer when school is out. “For every million dollars the state can come up, the feds will do $25 million," Stein said Tuesday at a meeting of the Council of State. That meant that $5 million in state dollars would generate $125 million in federal funding, the governor said. But there was a problem. “We don’t have a budget as we all know,” Stein said. “But we went to a number of our philanthropic and charitable partners and they contributed the money for us to leverage these funds, which will benefit a million kids this summer, to help ensure that they have nutrition.” The state's two-year budget was due to be enacted July 1; operations are continuing through funding levels of the last budget, or by a series of mini-budgets passed by the Ge