Officials at the Department of Economic Security say they’ve boosted capacity at their call center after self-reporting to federal officials that the agency dropped more than 3 million calls in an 18 month period.
Some Arizonans have previously told KJZZ that DES was making it nearly impossible to have their eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, verified by phone — the way the agency is requiring Arizonans to be processed.
Records obtained by KJZZ show that a large percentage of applications were denied due to failure to complete an interview. And just 13% of all calls for eligibility interviews resulted in a complete interview — all while Arizona slashed residents from SNAP by a higher rate than any other state.
That data, including the 3,087,293 dropped calls, covers a period from October 2024 to March 2026. DES officials said Wednesday that since then, they’ve improved their call center capacity.
And a spokesperson pointed to a growing caseload of Arizonans applying or verifying SNAP benefits as evidence of improvement.
Call center changes
In July, the department launched a public-private partnership to expand the capacity of its call center.
“Through this partnership, a dedicated team of approximately 30 third-party agents currently handles around 800 daily inquiries, taking the first steps to process the changes clients submit to their cases, like updates to income, employment, and who lives in their household, in addition to helping clients apply for services by phone,” DES spokesperson Brett Bezio said in an email.
Bezio added that the agency is working to prioritize interviews with Arizonans who are within four days of missing their interview deadline — a required step to verify SNAP eligibility. Non-interview call wait times to the agency have dropped to an average of 10 minutes, he added.
Bezio wrote that state lawmakers provided the resources the agency needed to “improve our service delivery.”
DES receives a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allows the agency to conduct phone interviews instead of in-person appointments.
The waiver is conditional and can be revoked.
“FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) would like to remind the State agency that the data is essential towards understanding the success of the State’s operation of the waiver,” Noble wrote on Oct. 2, 2024. “If the operation proves problematic, FNS may consider discontinuing the waiver.”
Bezio said FNS has not indicated they intend to revoke Arizona’s waiver.
An uptick in SNAP enrollment
A higher percentage of Arizonans have been knocked off food stamps since Congress approved HR 1 — also known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill" — than any other state in the nation, according to a recent study.
After Congress passed the law in July 2025, the number of Arizonans receiving SNAP benefits was reduced by nearly half a million, down to less than 450,000 as of March.
DES’s most recent statistical bulletin from July shows that cases have climbed up slightly, totaling more than half a million.
Bezio said that the “positive turn in our caseload tells us that recent structural improvements were meaningful, and we are on the right path to ensuring eligible families can access this critical assistance.”
DES utilizes state resources to implement changes
DES has said that they are underfunded and understaffed, and that federal changes required a lot of work to implement.
Bezio said that impacted the agency’s ability to process applications and conduct interviews. He credited an infusion of funding from state lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs have allowed them to make adjustments.
Hobbs gave DES $7.5 million last year to implement changes required by HR 1.
The agency got an additional $10.8 million in this year’s state budget and was exempted from sweeping budget cuts that impacted most state departments.
“With an infusion of resources earlier this year, DES is changing the story for Arizona,” Bezio wrote.
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