A $150,000 emergency food-assistance package approved by the Putnam County Legislature and County Executive Kevin Byrne during last fall’s federal government shutdown never reached the organizations it was intended to help, setting off questions over why the money was withheld and prompting the Legislature to act again — months after the initial resolution — to get the funds out the door.
At the heart of the dispute is a relatively simple question buried beneath the mechanics of county budgeting: When the Legislature approved $150,000 for food assistance last November, was the money supposed to be distributed regardless of how quickly the federal shutdown ended, or was it available only to cover expenses incurred while Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were disrupted?
Byrne’s administration says it was the latter. Several county legislators say that was never their understanding.
The original measure, Resolution 304 of 2025, was approved without opposition Nov. 5 and signed by Byrne two days later. It transferred $150,000 from the county’s general contingency account and placed it into three specific agency accounts: $75,000 for United Way of Westchester and Putnam, $50,000 for Putnam Community Action Partnership (CAP) and $25,000 for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Putnam County.
The funding came as the federal shutdown threatened SNAP benefits. In requesting the appropriation, Byrne said approximately 3,000 Putnam residents received SNAP benefits, including about 950 seniors, and that the county should use its existing agreements with nonprofit agencies to respond to the anticipated disruption.
But Congress subsequently acted to restore federal funding, and the shutdown ended shortly after the county's resolution was approved. Byrne's administration then treated the county money as reimbursement funding for eligible food-assistance expenses incurred during the emergency rather than as grants that automatically had to be paid to the three organizations.
Ultimately, none of the $150,000 was distributed.
That fact apparently was not widely known among legislators until this summer.
Byrne's office maintains the administration followed the resolution according to the circumstances under which it had been adopted.
“Resolution #304 was not a general appropriation directing the administration to distribute $150,000 to food pantries,” the county executive's office said in a statement. “It specifically authorized funding in response to the federal government shutdown and anticipated interruption of SNAP benefits.”
The Legislature approved the measure Nov. 5, and Byrne signed it Nov. 7. Five days later, Congress funded SNAP, and the shutdown ended, Byrne noted.
The county then allowed the organizations named in the resolution to seek reimbursement for eligible expenses incurred during the emergency. With SNAP funding restored, Byrne's office said it did not believe it had clear legislative authority to turn what had been approved as a shutdown-related emergency appropriation into unrestricted food-pantry funding.
There is some documentary support for the administration's interpretation.
In a Nov. 18 memo to Legislator Nancy Montgomery, Byrne said the county had contacted the organizations to explain how they could seek reimbursement for food-insecurity expenses incurred during the shutdown. Because the shutdown had ended, the county intended to reimburse eligible expenses through Nov. 14 and keep whatever remained encumbered in case another federal funding interruption occurred.
But that memo did not explicitly say that the bulk of the $150,000 would not be distributed.
That distinction has become a major source of frustration for legislators.
Mahopac Legislator Amy Sayegh said she believed the money approved in November was going to the organizations named in the resolution.
“I had no idea that [the money] didn't go anywhere,” Sayegh said. “Nancy [Montgomery] pinpointed it. I thought, 'Are you kidding me?'”
Sayegh said she subsequently spoke with Byrne, who told her he believed he was not authorized to distribute the money after SNAP was reinstated.
“That was not my understanding,” Sayegh said. “That money was promised.”
In a recent meeting, Legislature Chair Dan Birmingham characterized the episode as a “misunderstanding” on the county executive's part.
The situation has particularly frustrated United Way of Westchester and Putnam, which was slated to receive the largest portion of the appropriation.
President and CEO Tom Gabriel told legislators at an Aug. 24 meeting that United Way and the other organizations had publicly promoted the funding after it was approved.
United Way's plan, Gabriel said, was to identify families in need and purchase gift cards from local supermarkets that could be distributed to them.
“We promoted it out in the community,” Gabriel said. “It all got pulled out from under us and we weren't able to do any of this work.”
Gabriel told legislators that 34 percent of Putnam residents are living paycheck to paycheck and argued that the need for food assistance remains substantial.
When Byrne responded to Montgomery's questions sent to him in a memo last November, he said United Way worked with 10 affiliated food pantries around the county, while CAP operated another pantry under its own allocation. The list supplied by Byrne included food pantries in Brewster, Mahopac, Putnam Valley, Carmel, Cold Spring and Patterson.
Montgomery (D-Philipstown) said the missing money came to light while she was working on an entirely separate $150,000 food-security program included in the county's 2026 budget.
That distinction is important because the two pots of money have sometimes become confused.
The first $150,000 was the money approved in November 2025 under Resolution 304. It came out of the county's general contingency account — essentially money reserved for unexpected expenses —a nd was moved into accounts specifically designated for United Way, CAP and Cornell.
The second $150,000 was placed in the 2026 budget in a food-insecurity sub-contingency. That meant lawmakers had reserved the money specifically for food assistance but still needed to decide how it would be distributed.
While working with food pantries and other community organizations this spring and summer to determine how to spend that second allocation, Montgomery said she discovered that the original $150,000 from November had not gone out.
“They never got a dime of that money,” Montgomery told Mahopac News.
Montgomery said she does not view the matter as necessarily involving wrongdoing and acknowledged that Byrne's decision may have resulted from a differing interpretation of the original resolution.
“It could have been a misunderstanding,” she said. “I don't think he was legally bound to do it. But there was a resolution and it was promised.”
Her principal criticism is the lack of clear communication that the money was not going to be distributed.
The Legislature has now moved to eliminate any ambiguity.
A new measure reaffirms the 2025 resolution and explicitly authorizes the immediate expenditure of whatever portion of the original $150,000 remains legally available, while retaining the original limits of $75,000 for United Way, $50,000 for CAP and $25,000 for Cornell.
This is separate from the additional $150,000 food-insecurity program established for 2026. Montgomery stressed that the newer program does not replace the money approved last year.
And there is another consequence to the delay: The county can no longer obtain federal reimbursement for the original emergency expenditures, according to information presented to lawmakers. Senior Deputy County Attorney Heather Abissi told the Legislature at its Aug. 24 meeting that the reimbursement deadline had passed.
That has provided ammunition for Brett Yarris, the Democratic candidate challenging Byrne for county executive this fall. Yarris accused Byrne of disregarding the Legislature's authorization and argued that the failure to distribute the money cost the county an opportunity to recover the expenditure from the federal government.
However, Byrne's administration rejects the premise that it simply refused to carry out the Legislature's wishes. Its position is that the original appropriation was tied to a specific emergency — the federal shutdown and interruption of SNAP — and that once the shutdown ended and benefits resumed, spending the remaining money for a broader purpose required additional legislative authorization.
That authorization is now being provided.
For Montgomery, the renewed effort is less about assigning blame than getting money to organizations facing increasing demand.
“The bottom line with this funding is our food pantry lines are longer and the need is greater, and the holidays are coming,” she said. “It's a drop in the bucket.”
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