You may have seen the Austin American-Statesman piece today on the Texas Ag Commissioner pushing a summer food program for kids.

From the Statesman’s Tim Eaton:

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples on Wednesday promoted a program that offers free meals for children during the summer. Meanwhile, an Austin-based charity is preparing to fill a void left by city cutbacks by sponsoring sites to feed youths 18 and younger this summer.

Staples said that 2.1 million free and reduced-price meals are served every day to students in Texas during the school year. But only 15 percent of those students take advantage of the program in the summer months, which has led Texas to become the country's leader in what he called "food insecurity" among children.

Texas Watchdog looked at this food program a couple of months ago and found that there may be more to the story than just helping Texas kids. Texas Watchdog’s Mark Lisheron found critics of the Staples’ involvement in advertising the program, who wondered if he was politicizing the popular effort.

From Lisheron:

The problem for one liberal advocacy group and two of the Democrats running against him is this: Do the ads give an unfair advantage for the Republican Staples to be a guest in the homes of tens of thousands of Texans every day for three of the months leading up to the November election? Staples is running for a second four-year term in one of the state's top elected offices.


What's more, his opponents are complaining that Staples, a conservative who has regularly taken an anti-Washington stand alongside Gov. Rick Perry, is hypocritical for choosing to be the face of a program whose substance and promotion come from tax dollars dispensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Check out the Statesman piece.

And make sure to read the Texas Watchdog report, which includes audio of Staples’ radio ad promoting the food program.

Trent Seibert can be reached at trent@texaswatchdog.org or at 832-316-4994.

Photo of a school lunch by flickr user bookgrl, used via a Creative Commons license.