The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is Kentucky’s strongest tool in the fight against hunger and has significant benefits for health and our economy. Last year Congress passed H.R. 1, enacting the deepest cuts in the program’s history and now Senate Bill (SB) 257 threatens to exacerbate those cuts. At a time of rising food costs, SB 257 would create a host of new barriers for people to access needed assistance, resulting in fewer Kentuckians receiving help with grocery bills and new costs to the state.
At a minimum, the requirements in SB 257 will take up staff time and administrative funding needed to bring down payment error rates; at worst, they will increase errors. Implementing these sweeping policies would require an immense and ongoing mobilization of manpower that would be especially costly to the state due to changes in H.R. 1 that increased state costs associated with SNAP. And implementing these changes could cost Kentucky even more still down the line. For the first time ever, H.R. 1 puts at risk state funds for the cost of the benefits based on how accurate state workers are at providing the right amount in benefits to applicants (the “Payment Error Rate”). A small increase in the payment error rate, which would be more likely if SB 257 passes, would trigger a large increase in mandated state costs — up to $188 million in Kentucky.
Given how important SNAP is to families and communities across Kentucky, and mounting pressure on the state budget due to H.R. 1 and anticipated General Fund revenue declines, this legislative proposal should be abandoned in favor of policies that would improve food security, health and local economies.
By eliminating Broad Based Categorical Eligibility, SB 257 would take food assistance away from thousands of Kentuckians and reduce spending in local communities, while increasing costs to the state
Kentucky is one of 46 states that utilize Broad Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE) to determine who qualifies for SNAP, allowing the program to reach more working families and seniors with less red tape, a smaller public workforce and fewer payment errors. SB 257’s elimination of BBCE would take food away from thousands of Kentuckians and money out of local economies while increasing costs to the state.
BBCE enables the state to modestly raise SNAP’s gross income eligibility from 130% of the federal poverty level (FPL) to 200% FPL, although a household’s net income must still fall below the poverty line once certain household expenses like housing and utilities are taken into account. Without BBCE, the gross income eligibility for SNAP would drop to 130% FPL, taking food assistance away from over 40,000 Kentuckians in 16,900 households — including 16,800 kids and 6,600 older adults — according to data obtained from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS).
BBCE also allows the asset test to be waived, which disqualifies people for SNAP if their countable assets exceed $3,000 for most households and $4,500 for households that include seniors and people with disabilities. According to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS), 7,400 SNAP households, including 2,900 seniors or Kentuckians with a disability, would likely lose their food assistance for having assets like a car, family land, or emergency savings.
Mandating an asset test would also be expensive for the state as all 269,000 Kentucky SNAP households’ total assets would need to be verified, a labor-intensive process involving the verification of financial documents and referencing against existing state databases by the same state workers tasked with reducing payment errors. The last time eliminating BBCE was proposed in Kentucky in 2023, a fiscal note produced by the Legislative Research Commission said it would have cost $2.4 million annually to hire 28 additional full-time family support staff needed due to the increased amount of time it takes to verify assets.
SB 257 also creates an error-ridden over-verification process, which could result in even deeper federal funding cuts to Kentucky’s SNAP program
Implementing these sweeping changes could cost Kentucky even more still, as H.R. 1 newly ties federal funding that covers the cost of SNAP benefits to how accurate state workers are in determining eligibility and calculating benefit amounts. The new verification process would increase the likelihood of state workers making mistakes, and even a small increase in the “payment error rate” triggers a large cost-shift to the state, as much as $188 million a year in Kentucky.
Already, most Kentuckians with SNAP must complete a full verification process each year, with a six-month check-in to ensure eligibility requirements are met. This schedule is frequent enough to maintain the integrity of the program and not so frequent as to increase the likelihood of applicants and/or workers making errors. It’s also long been mandatory for states to continually monitor participant eligibility by checking participant information against several databases — like the Social Security Administration Death Master File (7 C.F.R. 272.14) and the Prisoner Verification System (7 C.F.R. 272.13) — so that SNAP participants are removed from the program permanently when they die or temporarily if they are incarcerated.
SB 257 significantly dials that process up, requiring a monthly verification process, based on old, inaccurate or conflicting databases, which can lead to error-prone multiple matches or inaccurate information about a household. These additional databases in SB 257, like payment and earning information from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), may not be up to date on factors that fluctuate frequently for Kentuckians with very low incomes, like income, employment and addresses. That means they are not timely enough to accurately determine SNAP benefits, resulting in errors.
SB 257 would also unnecessarily require state workers to determine if SNAP participants/applicants are in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “fleeing felon” database that tracks individuals who have been charged with, or convicted of, a felony but have absconded. As mentioned previously, states are already required to verify incarceration status and there is no evidence that “fleeing felons” are receiving SNAP.
SB 257 would disproportionately take food assistance away from kids
There are 217,000 Kentucky kids receiving SNAP benefits, comprising 40% of total participants. When households lose SNAP due to new verification burdens or the elimination of BBCE, as would happen with the passage of SB 257, the kids in those households lose food at home and lose streamlined access to WIC and free meals at school and child care centers. The 709 Kentucky child care centers that provide meals and snacks will lose funding through the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program. Fewer Kentucky kids participating in SNAP could also impact schools’ eligibility for federal funding through the Community Eligibility Provision, which currently enables 92.5% of Kentucky schools to offer free meals to all their 625,000 students.
The General Assembly should instead take up policies that would actually improve food security and nutrition outcomes for Kentuckians
SB 257 is one of several factory-farmed policies straight out of the playbook of the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) and other extreme anti-government organizations. The bill blames our neighbors and children for accepting the help with groceries that they are entitled to receive instead of facing the harsh reality that policymakers have failed to create a Kentucky where people can afford healthy food.
SNAP already provides food assistance to only three out of every four eligible people in Kentucky. Far from providing too much help with groceries, Kentucky provides too-little compared to nearly every other state in the U.S. This proposal would worsen, rather than improve, food security and nutrition in Kentucky by decreasing SNAP participation and cost Kentucky much more in the long term. However, there are several bills this session that could actually make improvements. House Concurrent Resolution 9 would encourage the federal government to reestablish exemptions for veterans from the counterproductive SNAP work reporting requirements that were expanded when Congress passed H.R.1. Kentucky would provide nutrition and health education through the SNAP Employment and Training Program if HB 781 and SB 322 became law. And HB 522 and SB 135 would ensure Kentuckians continue to receive their food assistance during a government shutdown.
