Members of the General Assembly are about to face a choice: Either find a way to fix errors in SNAP benefits or pay the price.
Just because the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has an error with a benefit does not mean that fraud is involved. Cassie Edner at the Virginia Poverty Law Center says the program's error rate can spike because someone at the Department of Social Services didn't file the right paperwork at the right time.
"If you have small changes in income, you don't need to report it," Edner says. "But let's say someone wants to make sure they do their due diligence and report that and they report it and the DSS case worker is just overburdened and doesn't get to the change in a timely manner; that is now an ineligibility, and people are being punished for that."
Virginia currently has an error rate of more than 11%, which has financial consequences under the new tax-and-spending bill recently passed by Congress and signed by the president.
"In Virginia, based on our current error rate, this could cost us almost $200 million in the upcoming biennium," says Levi Goren at the Commonwealth Institute. "And in the out years, it might cost us up to $530 million in future bienniums."
Next year, members of the General Assembly are likely to consider several policy changes aimed at bringing the error rate down, including increased training and salaries for case workers, as well as any changes that might simplify the process to avoid paperwork errors.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
