Recently published federal data shows that Alaska’s payment error rate for administering food stamp benefits was the highest of any state during the past fiscal year.
Between October 2021 and September 2022, the Alaska Division of Public Assistance reported a payment error rate of nearly 57%, compared to a national average of 11.5%.
Public assistance advocates say the error rate, which measures how accurately a state agency processes federal benefits, sheds light on continued problems at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance, which for nearly a year has struggled to process applications for food stamps and other federal benefits for tens of thousands of vulnerable Alaskans.
“Our state SNAP agency has clearly been struggling for quite some time to administer the program efficiently,” said Cara Durr, chief of advocacy and public policy at the Food Bank of Alaska. “So it’s not surprising that our error rate is so high. And it’s just another reason why increased staffing and technology for the Division of Public Assistance is so important.”
No financial penalties have been levied against the state, but that could change if the error rate stays above the national average for two consecutive years, officials say.
The error rate is a measure of “how accurately state agencies determine a household’s eligibility and benefit amount,” according to the federal Food and Nutrition Service, which distributes federal food stamp benefits — also referred to as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The rate includes both overpayments and underpayments.
The error rate is typically published yearly, but no data was available during the pandemic while renewals were happening automatically. Alaska wasn’t the only state to report an increased error rate since the rates were last published: The national overpayment rate rose from 6.18% in 2019 to 9.84% in 2022, prompting bipartisan concerns among members of Congress about mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.
State health officials say Alaska’s high error rate is a reflection of a mistake the Alaska Division of Public Assistance made when interpreting a federal waiver that allowed state agencies to forgo regular eligibility checks for food stamp recipients during the pandemic.
Automatic renewals were supposed to end in January 2022. But Alaska continued to renew applications without eligibility checks until around July 2022, when a quality control worker at the state agency realized the mistaken interpretation of the waiver, according to Tama Carson, deputy director of the Alaska Division of Public Assistance.
“That’s a very high number. But what’s important to understand is the number is due to the misapplication of a waiver,” Carson said. “If we had interpreted the waiver correctly, we would not have had this huge error rate. We would have probably been in the middle of the pack.”
Out of a sample of 680 SNAP case files in Alaska from last year that were reviewed by the quality control team, 461 were determined to be correct while 229 were flagged for errors, according to Carson. Of those, 192 were erroneous due to the waiver misapplication, and just 37 were true overpayments or underpayments, Carson said.
“There’s nothing in these numbers that would indicate fraud, or clients getting too much,” she added.
In an emailed statement, Stacy Dean, the top-ranking nutrition official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wrote that the federal agency was working with Alaska to finalize a corrective action plan “that will put them on a clear path to reduced errors going forward.”
Those fixes include staff training on how to work more efficiently and avoid errors, implementing longer recertification periods to cut down on work for both clients and staff, hiring more staff and making technology improvements, Carson said.
While other states had also misinterpreted the waiver, Carson said Alaska’s error rate was higher because benefit allocations here on average are much larger than other states’ due to high food costs and larger household sizes, especially in rural Alaska.
Carson added that at this time, no financial penalties were being levied against Alaska for their error, nor would Alaskans be required to pay back any benefits they received due to the misinterpretation. But continued mistakes could result in penalties.
This is at least the second time this year that Alaska Division of Public Assistance actions have prompted federal involvement. Earlier, the state’s SNAP backlog prompted a sharp federal warning and corrective action plan to address the backlog that had left thousands of low-income Alaskans, a majority whom are families with children, without food assistance benefits for months on end.
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