Caseworker errors add fuel to old fight

Food stamp mispayments are way up this year, and it has nothing to do with fraud

Benefit mis payments in the federal food-stamp program are nearly twice as common as states have long reported, according to new data released last week by the Agriculture Department.

The 2017 mispayment rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was 6.3 percent. It was 3.66 percent in 2014, the last time USDA released the calculation.

This year’s jump complicates a longtime point of pride for SNAP defenders: that the program helps feed 40 million people with negligible loss to trafficking, fraud or worker error. USDA classifies a case as an error if a family receives food stamps when they don’t qualify for them, or if they are issued more or less benefits per month than are allowed by federal regulations.

How it happens

The new data have already fueled criticism from those eager to downsize SNAP.

“These error rates reveal significant concerns with how states are administering the program,” said Jonathan Ingram, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank that has pushed for cuts to food stamps. “In the past, opponents of welfare reform have used these error rate reports as a shield against efforts to improve program integrity. But it turned out that those past reports were based on bad or even manipulated data.”

Mispayments in the food-stamp program are most commonly the result of caseworker error, and not fraud or deception by recipients, according to USDA. Overpayments are by far the most common type of error. But their number remains small compared to other large government programs.

Under current law, households are eligible for SNAP if their net monthly income falls below the poverty line and they meet certain limits on things such as personal savings and car ownership. The amount they receive each month depends on factors such as the number of people in the house, the amount of money they spend on utilities and rent, and expenses such as child care and medication.

Occasionally caseworkers make mistakes calculating benefits or verifying their information. Such mistakes are typically uncovered during audits and reported up to federal administrators.

Reversing a trend

For several years, beginning in the early aughts, these national rates of mispayment fell. Anti-hunger advocates regularly referenced them in reports and congressional hearings, arguing that low error rates shored up “public confidence” in SNAP.

But in September 2015, a report from the USDA’s inspector general raised concerns that some states were underreporting mispayments. Subsequent investigations by USDA and the Department of Justice found that 42 states had not followed proper protocol for reporting mispayments, and that a subset of those had covered up how often caseworkers made them.

In extreme cases, state officials shredded internal paperwork that showed benefit amounts were incorrect and encouraged food-stamp recipients to lie to auditors, USDA documents reviewed by The Washington Post show. Wisconsin, Virginia and Alaska agreed last year to repay $16.6 million to the federal government as part of DOJ settlement agreements in which the three states admitted to misleading federal auditors.

A number of the implicated states had worked with the same private consultant, who advertised that she could help agencies lower their error rates and win performance bonuses.

In a statement, Brandon Lipps, USDA’s acting deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, indicated that past issues with states had been resolved - and that the higher mispayment rate announced this year reflects its new procedures. The agency has also retrained state food-stamp staff and issued new rules on working with consultants.

But concerns linger about how some states administer SNAP. Congress has proposed several measures to prevent states from again misleading USDA as part of this year’s farm bill. The House’s version would, among other things, greatly expand the definition of a case “error.” The Senate’s farm bill proposes a number of new verification tools designed to make it easier for caseworkers to verify an applicant’s information.