Governor Andrew Cuomo banned the city from requiring fingerprinting for food stamps, but the city continued the practice.

According to the New York Daily News, a reporter called 311 and was told by an operator that each individual applying for a food stamp must be fingerprinted. 

"Individuals that are 18 years and older must be finger imaged," the operator told the Daily News reporter. "You have to be fingerprinted. that's an eligibility criteria." 

The operator appeared to be reading from a script, the paper reported. Last year, Cuomo called an end to the fingerprinting requirement in his State of the State address 

"We shouldn't treat the poor or the hungry as criminals, " Cuomo told reporters during a news conference. "That's what we've been doing and that's what's going to stop."

Cuomo said many New Yorkers are eligible for the federal food stamps programs, but did not receive them because of the stigma associated with being fingerprinted. He said the fingerprinting process discouraged people from getting help and puts a black cloud over the food stamp association.  

Bloomberg went against Cuomo's ban and said fingerprinting was needed to prevent fraud. Bloomberg warned that the city would have to increase fraud investigations, which would cost the city lots of money. 

"You don't want to go back to the bad old ways [when] some people were double-dipping," he said. 

In New York City, 1.8 million people a year receive food stamps, according to the New York Times. New York state stopped asking for fingerprints for food stamps recipients in 2007. The state was granted an exemption at the request of the Bloomberg administration.  

Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson campaign were the first to become aware of the 311 incident, according to the Daily News. Thompson recently vowed in an anti-poverty plan, which would also ban the fingerprinting requirement for good.  

"I will make sure a fingerprinting requirement for nutrition assistance energy comes back to New York City. It's insulting and demeaning," said Thompson during his campaign trail. "But more important, it avoids the real problem - the lack of food option for too many working families.

After the finger-printing news broke, the Bloomberg administration has seemingly addressed the issue. 

"There was a miscommunication," Samantha Levine, a Bloomberg spokesperson told the Daily News. "Finger imaging is no longer required for food stamps and we have updated the information in 311."

According to the Daily News, 311 operators have updated their system.