Over 450,000 people have been removed from the food stamp program, yet Arizona’s error rate in determining food stamp eligibility continues to increase.
Arizona was reported to have one of the highest error rates, at 10.8% for the federal fiscal year, which is slightly higher than the national rate of 10.62%. If Arizona fails to get its error rate below 10% before Oct. 1, the state will have to pay an estimated $208 million of SNAP benefits in the fiscal year 2028.
Ray Stern, reporter at The Arizona Republic, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the meaning behind these numbers.
H.R. 1 is what brought historic changes to the SNAP program. The act set new work requirements, which caused the highest loss of SNAP recipients across the country, but the act also included rules regarding error rate.
“Error rate, for the SNAP program, is whether the SNAP program is having too many over payments or under payments” Stern said. “The federal government… they require that this error rate cannot be too high either way.”
The Arizona Department of Economic Security predicted a slightly smaller error rate, and are already working to find ways to lower the rate. According to Stern, just because there are fewer people to eligible does not mean the error rate is automatically smaller.
“It all comes down to individual applications that people are putting in, and then what they end up getting from the federal government,” Stern said. “The error rate is strictly dependent on the money that are going away, or that are outside the eligibility range.”
Even with a reduction of SNAP recipients, current recipients are still having a difficult time verifying their eligibility, and actually receiving the benefits. Before H.R. 1 was passed there was a wave of layoffs at the DES. Mixed with the new list of eligibility requirements, the process for SNAP recipients has not become any easier.
The federal target error rate is 6% or less, a goal that, according to Stern, is achievable because Arizona has been there before, and is a goal that the DES is striving to achieve.
