DC staring at $4.4 million penalty for errors in paying out SNAP benefits

The federal government is fining Washington, D.C., $4.4 million due to what it considers a higher-than-acceptable error rate in its payments to recipients of food assistance programs.

It is the second year in a row that district officials have exceeded the error rate in processing benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Department of Agriculture found that in 20% of cases, the district either overpaid or underpaid SNAP recipients.

The USDA only issues a penalty if the payment error rate exceeds 6% two years in a row.

Roughly 140,000 district families rely on SNAP benefits in order to make ends meet. Instances where an error occurs can have a severe impact on families as it can take months to correct them. Typically, the district's Department of Human Services won’t even pick up on the errors as it falls on the families to bring it to the officials’ attention.

“Even when these errors are corrected, potentially months later, the impacted recipients and their families are not made whole,” Haley Hoff, an attorney with Legal D.C. advocating families who rely on SNAP, told the Washington Post. “District residents go hungry when [the D.C. Access System] prevents them from obtaining their full SNAP entitlement.”

Laura Zeilinger, director of the district's Department of Human Services, and Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor of health and human services, attended a city council hearing to address concerns regarding the high payment error rates. The D.C. Access System — which is in control of administering SNAP benefits, the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families program, and about 300,000 Medicaid enrollees — is tremendously stressed, according to Turnage. It has reportedly cost taxpayers $600 million to develop and maintain the D.C. Access System.

Turnage said the staff managing the system have struggled to keep up with its high demands, and the have had to work overtime and weekend shifts. Since 2022, Washington, D.C., has the slowest processing rate for SNAP applications in the nation.

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USDA is allowing the district a few options in dealing with the fine. The agency would allow the city to reinvest half of the penalty in making improvements in the SNAP system.

Turnage said that the department is working to identify the core problems within the SNAP system.