About 380,000 Arizonans were removed from or left SNAP program since July

Roughly 380,000 Arizonans are no longer receiving food assistance after Congress adopted more stringent requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Congress passed a federal budget bill in July that established new requirements for eligibility to receive SNAP benefits. Those new rules eliminated exemptions to work requirements for veterans and former foster youth and expanded the age range for adults on SNAP who are required to work to stay in the program.

Arizona had more than 908,000 people in the program at that time.

According to the state Department of Economic Security, nearly 380,000 people — over 41% of the recipients — left or were removed from the program since the summer as state officials worked to comply with federal law.

“The caseload decline is driven in large part by the new requirements of H.R.1 that changed SNAP eligibility and imposed new quality review requirements on states,” agency spokesperson Brett Bezio said.

H.R.1 also requires states to lower their “error rates” in the SNAP program to under 6%, or lose out on federal funding. The error rate is the percentage of times a state gave SNAP recipients the wrong benefit amounts by either overpaying or underpaying them.

Arizona’s error rate was 8.8% in fiscal year 2024, but it’s unclear whether the state is safely below the threshold now that so many people are gone from the program.

Gov. Katie Hobbs indicated that may be the case in a recent veto letter.

GOP lawmakers sent Hobbs a package of bills aimed at reducing the SNAP error rate. She vetoed them, arguing the bills would be duplicative of what DES is already doing.

“With H.R.1 now on the books, and with significant penalties to come if operational changes are not made this year, the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) has already taken decisive action to improve the accuracy of SNAP benefit determinations,” Hobbs wrote. “These include enhancing eligibility verifications, increasing staffing and training focused on accuracy, and investing in technology solutions.”

In December, Hobbs allocated $7.5 million to DES to hire new staff and “enhance technology and third party verification.” That included funding to expand the agency’s ability to check participants’ income information.

In her proposed budget, Hobbs is requesting more funding and more staffing for DES to improve the SNAP program even more.

“Our priority is to ensure that SNAP remains accessible to eligible individuals and to improve the payment error rate,” Bezio said.