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During a Joint Committee on Administrative Rules hearing this
week, the Illinois Department of Human Services answered
questions about the state’s handling of the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program. State Sen. Don DeWitte, R-St.
Charles, asked why the error rate has gone from 5.7% to 11.5% in
8 years.
“It's a very expensive proposition for the state of Illinois,”
DeWitte said during Tuesday's JCAR meeting in Chicago. “If the
number stays high, correct, to the tune of about $800 million.”
DHS bureau chief Sara Bechtold said they are working through
ways to bring the rate down.
“I can't speak to what happened in 2017. But I know that since I
have started and since the rollout of the public law … we have
been doing everything that we can to come up with a plan that
will help us minimize those errors,” Bechtold said.
Bechtold said they are looking at adjustments of cost of living
allocation rates to get payments correct and having renewals
every six months instead of yearly, among other changes.
State Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, asked the Illinois Department
of Human Services about how they’re working to lower the SNAP
error rate. Bechtold said there are difficulties.
“Guidance from the federal level has been very slow in coming
down the pipes, and has been very vague,” she said.
Spain said it’s imperative to taxpayers that the state drive the
error rate down for food subsidies to ensure those who need it
get it.
“A very important benefit, but it's a very expensive benefit,”
Spain said. “And if we can reduce the error rate as a state of
Illinois, we'll be doing a good service for both of those
groups.”
If the state’s 11.5% error rate isn’t nearly cut in half to
below 6%, Illinois taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds
of millions of dollars to cover the errors.
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