By ANN HINCH
Associate Editor

CHICAGO, Ill. — In spite of budget problems over the past few years, Illinois does have positive fiscal news: According to the USDA, it earned the fourth-highest payment accuracy rate in disbursement of SNAP benefits, of all states, in 2010.

Renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) three years ago, SNAP benefits used to be known as food stamps. Local distribution of these benefits is administered by state agencies; in Illinois it’s the state Department of Human Services (DHS). SNAP benefits themselves are federal tax dollars, but administrative costs are normally divided between the feds and each state.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack explained that the Obama administration has been trying to improve payment accuracy under the program – making sure benefits go where they’re needed. Last week, Kevin Concannon, USDA under secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, recognized a handful of states that performed well last year in meeting this goal.

“Americans are living through a particularly challenging period that has extended over the last 3.5 years,” he said, adding currently, 44 million people in the United States receive SNAP benefits, half of whom are children.
He credited these states with enacting practices that bolster SNAP’s integrity and show “sound stewardship” of the tax dollars used to pay for it. At the top was Florida, with an error rate of 0.78 percent – which means 99.22 percent of households in the state were receiving the proper amount of benefit based on eligibility.

Nationally, he said the error payment rate in 2010 was down to 3.81 percent, from over 4 percent the year before and up somewhere in the teens during the 1990s. What this means, the USDA stated, is that $356 million was not erroneously paid out in 2010.

Coming in behind Florida were South Dakota with an error rate of 1.31 percent, Delaware with 1.52 percent and Illinois with 1.7 percent. Illinois also achieved the third most-improved accuracy rate of 4.47 percent, which means in 2009 its error rate had been 6.17.

“We’ve been really celebrating this accomplishment,” said Jennifer Hrycyna, associate director for policy and field operations for the Illinois DHS.
Caseworkers are struggling with decreased staffing because of state budget problems, at a time when more people are applying for public assistance in the same economy; right now, Illinois has 863,000 open SNAP cases. Whereas a typical worker caseload is 700-800 per year, Hrycyna said some in the state are working more than 2,500 each.

The key to better accuracy even with such high workloads, she said, is each worker doing their best to catch errors in applications and processing. “There’s always a (non-federal) quality control staff in each state that reviews a sample of cases,” she said, adding often-seen errors are noted in newsletters sent to state employees.

The DHS also maintains a website with notes about administration, that employees may access and read.

Indiana received USDA kudos for the nation’s second most-improved error rate, down to 2.6 from 7.13 percent in 2009. Rich Adams, deputy director of the Indiana Division of Family Resources, Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), explained in 2007 the agency embarked on a modernization of the SNAP eligibility system, from paper-to electronic-based.

“Looking back, it was a good thing, because that’s when demand picked up,” he said.

Adams said the FSSA went to electronic applications and case files, as well as a call-in system that let people ask for a worker only if they couldn’t obtain information from the interactive phone computer, and increased field managers. FSSA spokesman Marcus Barlow added the USDA’s recognition was “a refreshing moment.

“I think our system has been maligned in the past, and we’ve had to make some changes because of that,” he said.

According to the 2010 SNAP annual report, retailers nationwide redeemed more than $64 billion spent on SNAP-approved foods last year. Among these retailers were 1,611 farmers and farmers’ markets redeeming more than $7.5 million, far higher than the number allowing customers to use food stamps just five years before.

Hrycyna said in Illinois, use of EBT, or Electronic Benefits Transfer, cards at farm markets is increasing each year. This is not a new allowable use of SNAP/food stamps, but since the EBT works like a debit card, it requires the retailer have technology to process it. Further, she said the machine has to be wireless, since a farmstand isn’t usually next to a phone jack.
The USDA provides monetary incentives to the seven states with the best payment accuracy rates and the three with the most improved payment accuracy, while $6 million is awarded among the four states with the lowest negative error rates and the most improve negative error rates. For the second straight year, states overall have improved their negative error rates (a measure of denials, terminations and suspensions).

Two states, Texas and Illinois, are being recognized for both best payment accuracy rates and most improved accuracy rates. In Indiana, Barlow remarked its award will be plowed back into paying for administrative costs of the program (he said the money is not used toward SNAP benefits themselves).