The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is urging the Governor and state legislature to increase funds for Foodshare operations or risk costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Federal changes to the SNAP, or Foodshare as it’s called in Wisconsin, are expected to cost the state more to run the program that helps feed nearly 700,000 residents.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year made some significant changes to how Foodshare is structured.
The cost to administer the program has traditionally been split 50/50 between state and federal governments.
Starting in October that shifts to 75% of states covering costs with the remaining 25% by the federal government.
The Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequity expects the changes will “upend state budgets.” It found that SNAP costs will rise 50 to 768 percent depending on the state.
Work requirements changed in November which means more recipients will need to go through the Foodshare Enrollment and Training Program-increasing costs.
States will also need to pay a penalty if their error rate goes over 6%.
“These additional costs to Wisconsin taxpayers are a direct result of changes made by the Trump administration, who created more red tape barriers to make it harder for people to access basic food and health care,” said DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson.
Johnson says Wisconsin does a good job of keeping the error rate below 6%. In 2024, it was about 4.5%.
But DHS is raising concerns that the increase in people moving the work program will increase the error rate if they aren’t able to hire more people to keep it in check.
“We know how to reduce the error rate in Wisconsin, we're a national leader. We have gotten calls from across the country on how do we do it,” said Bill Hanna, the Wisconsin Medicaid Director. “We use tools to verify that food share amounts are calculated correctly, and we have a sort of double check process for some of our cases. Those 56 positions are to allow us to have more cases go through that secondary review before they are certified, so that we do not create errors.”
Hanna stressed that errors are not fraud, but rather mistakes of either underpaying or overpaying recipients.
“Error rates are incredibly complex. They are not fraud. They are not always agency error. They're also not intentional member error. It is a complex program, and error rates are incredibly complex,” said Hanna.
DHS has been working with the Governor’s office and the state legislature to get $70 million to hire the additional staff.
If the state’s payment error rate gets above 6%, Wisconsin would be required to pay between $68.5 million and $205.5 million annually, according to DHS.
