WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – If you\u2019re 60 years old or older, the man in state government whose job it is to look out for you was in Watertown on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Greg Olsen, state director for the Office for the Aging, worries about a problem affecting New Yorkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my biggest concern right now is we have 676,000 people over the age of 60 that are going to lose their SNAP benefits literally in a couple of days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Olsen is referring to the effects of the continuing government shutdown in Washington. He expects that if seniors don\u2019t get the benefits, they\u2019ll need to turn to a Jefferson County program.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I expect that the number of people we support with our meal program is going to increase significantly in the next few months,\u201d said Bethany Munn, director of Jefferson County Office for the Aging.<\/p>\n
Both officials are also worried about seniors getting help from the Home Energy Assistance Program, or HEAP. It helps with heating bills. The government shutdown essentially stops the process in its tracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no solution that I\u2019m aware of, so, getting applications in, getting all the paperwork in as quickly as possible is going to be what really kind of helps the individual,\u201d said Munn.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to get more difficult unless we end this government shutdown because the types of programs and services provided here in Jefferson County and in 58 other Offices for the Aging across the country really help individuals maintain their independence and we can provide some economic security,\u201d said Olsen.<\/p>\n
Olsen says despite federal cuts and the federal government shutdown, he doesn\u2019t expect his office\u2019s budget to get cut, as it was recently given an additional $45 million from the state to add to next year\u2019s budget. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WWNY. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – If you\u2019re 60 years old or older, the man in state government whose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13781,3990,9,11,10,49,51,50,13782,10604,13783,7524],"class_list":["post-20408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-greg-olsen","tag-heap","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-office-for-the-aging","tag-snap","tag-visit","tag-watertown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}