Ohio is facing a potential tripling in the cost of its food stamps program under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, unless it can reduce administrative errors in the program.
The cuts hinge on whether Ohio can reduce what’s known as its “error rate” – a federal measure of how often households are found to have received either more or less benefits than they should have after an audit.
Under the bill, the federal government shifted more of the costs of running what’s officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to the states. The cuts are meant to reduce federal spending while also helping to pay for the federal bill’s income tax cuts.
That change cut Ohio’s SNAP funding by $70 million, or half of what the state spends on the caseworkers, software and other expenses associated with running the program.
A second, much larger round of federal cuts is looming. As it stands, Ohio will lose an additional $320 million in additional federal funding, according to researchers at Georgetown University. That would increase Ohio’s share of running SNAP from about $146 million to about $537 million annually.
But the state can avoid those cuts if it can lower the “error rate” from its current 9% to below 6%. The errors are often technical – such as outdated income information – rather than fraud.
The deadline to improve the error rate is the end of September – and the data for calculating the rate is being collected right now. The cuts wouldn’t take effect until October 2027.
Ohio’s error rate last was below 6% in 2017, according to federal data. In the most recent year data is available, it was just above 9%, ranking 21st of 55 U.S. states and territories.
“I’m hopeful it can be done,” said Jon Honeck, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association. “We’re going to see how difficult that is.”
SNAP provides free groceries to Ohioans who meet certain income limits — currently those earning up to $42,900 for a family of four, or 130% of federal poverty guidelines. Nearly 1.4 million Ohioans receive SNAP, receiving a total of $236.1 million in free food in February, the most recent month that data is available.
That means about 11% of Ohioans receive SNAP, although the percentage ranges above 20% in several Appalachian counties, and is in the low single digits in suburban counties.
Ohio lawmakers help counties offset some cuts
Lawmakers are already grappling with the first round of cuts.
Last week, Republican state lawmakers finalized a bill that gives $12.5 million to county governments to help make up for the $70 million in federal cuts. The spending was part of a larger budget corrections bill, which are typically uncontroversial.
But many Democrats voted against the bill after objecting to how Republicans split the $12 million. The GOP majority decided to give $226,486 to each of Ohio’s 25 largest counties. That means Cuyahoga County, which lost $7.2 million under the federal bill, will get the same makeup amount as Erie County, which lost about $235,700.
In other words, those largest counties are getting less than half the makeup money despite being home to 75% of the state’s SNAP caseload.
Cuyahoga County is working to figure out how to make up the difference. Kevin Gowan, director of the Cuyahoga County Job and Family Services, said the $7 million cut amounts to the cost to pay 90 caseworkers.
“It’s almost as if they are setting up specifically for us to fail, and then for it to be blamed on counties like Cuyahoga County,” state Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, a Cuyahoga County Democrat, said in an interview.
Republicans countered that they wanted to spread the money as equally as possible around the state. They also say the largest counties have the tax base – and financial reserves – to make up for the federal cuts and the smaller ones don’t. House Speaker Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, also told reporters that local government officials frequently exaggerate the financial consequences of state decisions.
“We are going to make as many counties whole as we can,” state Rep. Brian Stewart, a Pickaway County Republican, said last week. “But we are not going to simply shovel all the money to the three largest counties at the expense of the other 85.”
Ohio works to reduce errors
Meanwhile, Ohio has spent months trying to cut its error rate to try to avoid the $320 million penalty.
Officials warn the challenge is complicated – and could be made harder by the very cuts they are trying to offset.
One of the most common reasons for errors is a change in a recipient’s personal circumstances – such as a pay raise or a new job. This can change their eligibility, but the change isn’t always reported by the recipient or input quickly enough by caseworkers into the SNAP computer system.
Caseworkers also can commit errors in typing information into the county computer system.
Cuyahoga County is exploring how to use AI to improve accuracy, Gowan said.
Another part of the solution is outreach – letting people know how important it is to keep their information up to date so Ohio doesn’t risk losing its federal funding.
And starting in April, counties will begin reporting county-level error rates for the first time, a requirement in a new law the legislature passed in November.
To conduct that audit, counties will be required to check a handful of randomly chosen cases each month. The sample varies by county size, ranging from 15 cases to 25 cases a month.
If the amount someone receives is more or less than what they should have gotten, it’s considered an “error.”
Honeck, the executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association, said larger counties should be able to absorb the extra work since they are more likely to have existing quality control departments.
But smaller counties might be required to pull a supervisor off another assignment, which could cause other work to fall behind.
Honeck also said many counties have been on a caseworker hiring freeze since the looming federal cuts were announced. The additional money the legislature approved this week could help some counties make some hires, he said.
However, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro, a Democrat, said even with the extra funding, it may have to cut an additional 40 caseworker jobs, in addition to the 60 positions it’s previously eliminated in anticipation of the cuts, according to written testimony she submitted to lawmakers last week.
“It is not hard to imagine that this situation is likely going to significantly increase error rates, potentially costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars,” Shapiro said.
“At some point, there has to be a reckoning’
Georgetown University researchers and the nonprofit Congressional Budget Office have said some states, if confronted with hundreds of millions of dollars in new expenses, might just decide to discontinue the SNAP program.
The state could have other options to reduce eligibility, which would result in some of the 1.4 million Ohioans who get food stamps losing their services.
Republican lawmakers have floated other solutions, such as the state taking over responsibility for running the SNAP program for some or all counties.
“At some point, there has to be a reckoning,” said Huffman, the Republican Ohio House speaker. “Or you know, a ‘Let’s open up the hood, and see what’s going on underneath there.”
Joree Novotny, director of the Ohio Food Bank Association, said food stamp recipients are people’s friends and neighbors. Many are disabled or children or senior citizens, she said.
“I would hate to see them suffer because of what really are complex considerations in the funding and policy mechanisms,” she said.