OHIO — A recent study from the Ohio Association of Foodbanks showed more than half of food pantry visitors were forced to choose between a meal or their medication. Local nonprofit leaders said things are about to get worse.

Gov. Mike DeWine recently announced a budget that reduced funding for food banks from around $32 million to around $24 million. His proposal is less than $7.5 million from the previous one, but the governor said that the money they received in previous years was only temporary.

Volunteers at Mid-Ohio Food Collective donate their time to feed people in need. Among them is Linda Johnson, who has been helping for the last nine years since she retired back in 2016.

“One of the reasons is because when I was working, my job would come here to volunteer, and the other reason is because as a youngster my mother had the need to utilize pantries and food banks in order to take care of us,” Johnson said.

More than one-third of pantry visitors didn’t have enough food at their households, according to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks.

Johnson’s household used to be one of them as her mother was a widow at 28-years-old.

She had five children to take care of under the age of eight.

“Once my father passed, she had to try to gain some skills to be able to go to the workforce,” Johnson said. “But until she could get skills and gain full employment, we had to utilize some of the pantries.”

Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said the need for food keeps piling up in Ohio.

For some people who are trying to pay their bills, it often means sacrificing food, Novotny said. Especially after the pandemic, followed by inflation.

“That’s affecting things like food, the cost of shelter and utilities, transportation, child care and health care,” Novotny said. “We have folks that have reached their golden years who find themselves unable to stretch their social security, their meager retirement savings to meet those basic needs to pay those bills.”

At a recent event at the statehouse, the Ohio Association of Foodbanks laid out some numbers for Ohio’s lawmakers on why cutting the budget would hurt food banks.

“From July through December of 2024 we saw more food pantry visitors in any six-month period in our 35 year history,” Novotny said.

State Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., said while he understands the budget is less, he still questions why they’re reducing it from food banks.

Williams said it’s more about the timing that this funding is being reduced that concerns him.

“I understand that there’s going to be a reduction in our overall budget, because we’re no longer receiving federal COVID dollars, that doesn’t mean we should step aside from our commitments to those lower income individuals who are relying on food banks to simply put food on the table and feed their families,” Williams said. “I think it’d be ill advised at this time to reduce the funding to our food banks especially at a time where we’re proposing giving hundreds of millions of dollars for sports stadiums being built and other programs like allocating marijuana taxes and things like that.”

Novotny said the organization works well with DeWine and have received his support in the past.

DeWine’s office responded about the budget with a statement:

“The previous budget included many onetime expenditures that were supported by onetime state and federal funding. The upcoming FY 2026-2027 budget is back to normal funding levels, supporting ongoing programs. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks is proposed to receive flat ongoing funding at $24,550,000 in this budget.”

Nonprofit leaders said the biggest risk right now is that they may have to give less food to each pantry visitor to meet that budget.

The food bank door opens to help everyone, even those who don’t expect to find themselves in need.

As for Johnson, who knows what it means to have food insecurity, she still has the hope to help others overcome food insecurity.

“A lot of people, they’ll come for the first time and sometimes they’re very emotional because they feel like their pride is getting in the way and they said, ‘I’ve never had to do this before,’” Johnson said. “We can get to the point where people will consistently have food on their table and not have to worry about where the next meal is coming from.”