Last year, President Donald Trump and Congress passed a huge budget reconciliation bill that contained changes to SNAP's funding structure, making states responsible for a larger portion of administrative costs for the program.
The act shifted millions of dollars in program costs to states. Currently, SNAP's administrative costs are split in half between the federal and state governments. The Big Beautiful Bill Act bumps the states' share up to 75%.
Oklahoma Human Services presented its annual budget request to the House Appropriations and Budget Committee last Wednesday. During the meeting, Jeffery Cartmell, the department's director, said that a cost share shift is coming in October.
Lowering the state's error rate
In addition to shifting administrative costs, the federal changes could also make states pay for more of the actual benefits distributed to program participants. In the past, the federal government paid for the SNAP benefit cost.
The law ties the cost of the benefit to a state's error rate; the higher the error rate is, the larger benefit cost share the states will owe. States can avoid additional costs if their program's administrative error rate is below 6% in fiscal year 2028.
Error rates are over- and underpayments made to recipients, not fraud rates, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent USDA data shows Oklahoma's snap error rate at 10.87%.
Cartmell said if the error rate stays where it is, the state would take a hit of about $250 million in benefit costs.
"That is not what's going to happen in FY 2028," Cartmell said. "I've told our team from the beginning, since July when this became law, we will be under 6%."
While answering lawmaker questions, he said the agency has been working on lowering the error rate. The department has remodeled training for new staff and is working with a consultant to address inefficiencies.
Cartmell said cases are more prone to errors if they involve total benefits over $800, or if they're handled by employees in their first year. Since mid-September, he said, supervisors at the department have also had to approve cases over that amount if it's a worker's first year.
"From October to the last time I saw the report a week or two ago, that process alone has stopped over a million and a half error dollars from going out the door," Cartmell said. "I think there's a lot of ways that we can just fix what we already have to make the system overall."
He said the bulk of the state's error rate is caused by mistakes from benefit recipients. SNAP recipients must update their information as situations change, such as if they get a pay raise.
"Oftentimes, when we see errors it's because clients' situations have changed and it wasn't updated quickly enough in the system, which then dings us for an error," Cartmell said. "The other side of client errors oftentimes, are when, I think, we need to do a better job asking clients questions on the front end."
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
