After 3 million dropped calls and 500,000 people kicked off SNAP rolls, what's next for Arizonans?

States across the country have been cutting people off of the SNAP rolls. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has been shrinking since Republicans in Washington, D.C., enacted new work requirements for the federal food aid program last year.

But, cuts to Arizona’s rolls are much higher than every other state. In Arizona, 55% of SNAP recipients were kicked off the program. That’s roughly 500,000 people — including close to 200,000 kids.

The question of why has been dogging the state, and KJZZ's Camryn Sanchez has some answers and some ideas about what's next.

Politics

Data shows DES failed to complete most SNAP eligibility interviews, resulting in massive cuts

Camryn Sanchez

The state agency responsible for confirming which Arizonans qualify for SNAP benefits reported dropping more than 3 million calls with potential beneficiaries during an 18 month period — as nearly half a million Arizonans who previously received food stamps were cut from the program.

Listen • 1:10

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so you have been covering this story from the beginning, breaking news here, and you’ve talked to leaders on both sides of the aisle about these cuts, as well as people in line at the food bank about what happened in their situations, right? Now you have found that the agency that’s responsible for confirming basically who qualifies for SNAP benefits reported dropping more than 3 million calls. This is when people call in. Tell us about what happened here.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, so this is kind of summing up and kind of confirming a lot of what we heard from folks who say that they lost their benefits over the last year or so, which is DES is asking people to do phone interviews now. And a lot of folks told me at line in a for St. Mary’s Food Bank, actually, that they get on the phone and then either DES doesn’t answer or doesn’t respond to them and they can’t get through, they can’t complete their interview, and then that results in them getting dropped from the program because they don’t have a completed interview.

LAUREN GILGER: And there’s a timeline on that, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s a 30-day timeline, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So you have 30 days, you have to call and have this interview, and people can’t get through. That must be infuriating. What do people say?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Basically what you just said. [LAUGHTER] And it’s not just folks from that one incident, either. I mean, we’ve received a lot of outreach and I’ve talked to a lot of folks who say something very consistent along those lines. And as for DES, they’ve said, you know, they kind of acknowledge that people are complaining about the problem, but they said that they’re understaffed and underfunded, and that’s kind of the issue.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so DES’s response there is notable. But these are their own stats, these dropped calls that you found, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, dropped calls, and then a high percentage of applications being rejected. And, you know, these statistics are being reported to the federal government, and DES has to make these regular reports. But this information hadn’t previously been available.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. What made you go down this path, Camryn? Why did you want these numbers about calls?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I wanted to confirm what people had been saying and get into the statistics of it. I think also, we’ve heard a lot of the changes that the federal government made to the SNAP program in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" were aimed at mitigating waste, fraud and abuse. We’ve heard that line from Republican lawmakers in particular over and over again at the state level and the federal level.

But what people were telling us here is that they are eligible and just as eligible as they have been for SNAP benefits — people who have been on it maybe for a while — but for the first time ever, they just weren’t able to complete the process, and that’s why they weren’t able to get benefits anymore. And, you know, these statistics corroborate that to an extent.

LAUREN GILGER: And then you see people in line at the food bank. Here at the Arizona state Capitol, Republicans have told you, right, that the folks who were kicked off, these 500,000 people, were people who shouldn’t have been on there to begin with, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, they’ve said that if people are being kicked out of the program, it’s a good thing because it means that we’re getting rid of some of that abuse and we’re streamlining things and making them run more smoothly.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Republicans, as you said, in Washington made these changes on the argument that there’s a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in these kinds of benefit programs. Tell us exactly about the work requirements and what changes were made.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, so this wasn’t just SNAP. I mean, Medicaid also we’ve heard that cuts are incoming and that they’ve wanted to beef up these requirements. For SNAP, you know, folks, the folks that I’ve talked to, again, they’ve said that they are still eligible, even with the new work requirements, and that they are either looking for work or people have said, you know, that they’re struggling with disability and leave and stuff like that.

And oftentimes there’s a family with one or two breadwinners and other dependents who are maybe older adults or young kids. A lot of these are families that we’re talking about where the kids obviously don’t work, so that doesn’t really apply to those folks. But the work requirements, yes, they did get increased. You do have to, you do have to work more and work longer hours to apply for these benefits.

LAUREN GILGER: Is there a lot of paperwork involved in that kind of stuff for folks, Camryn? I mean, we’re talking about a call, like on-demand interview process as well, but there’s a lot of steps, it sounds like, to prove it.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, you also have to apply and reapply. You can’t just apply once and then get benefits forever. You have to keep reapplying and proving your eligibility over and over and over again. So if your circumstances change, then you also could lose access to your benefits that way.

LAUREN GILGER: Is there waste, fraud and abuse, though, in these programs, Camryn?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I mean, I would say there’s probably waste, fraud and abuse in every government program that has ever existed. But it’s sort of to the extent, and is — I think also the question is, are these changes actually targeting that? Are these changes really mitigating all of the waste, fraud and abuse, or are there other ways that they should be doing that?

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So you mentioned DES’s response here, the agency sort of responsible for this. They say they’re underfunded, understaffed. By how much? Like, what’s the situation look like there?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Apparently by several dozen people. I mean, they are saying that they really don’t have the capacity. And we’ve heard similar stuff from DES on other programs, like they administer unemployment, DDD. So it’s not just the SNAP program. And DES has, you know, changed over time. It’s a state agency that relies on funding from the state Legislature and the budget process. But I think that DES is saying that if they did have more staff, things like, you know, the call center would be less of an issue.

LAUREN GILGER: So what’s next, then, Camryn? Like, is DES now under pressure to fix this problem, to make some changes? Are they going to hope they get more funding next time around?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, I think one important element of this is the federal government, actually, because DES applied for a waiver, which we’re using right now, and doesn’t expire for another couple years. And that waiver is what allows DES to do these phone interviews as opposed to all in-person interviews. But it comes with conditions.

And this federal waiver, which is administered through USDA, which ultimately runs like big SNAP, requires, you know, DES to run the program well. And so these statistics that we were given are actually from a report that was given to the federal government. And so we could potentially lose out on that waiver, which means DES would have to reconfigure everything that they’re doing. So I think there’s pressure from that side.

And then also there’s been pressure from Democratic lawmakers who who are concerned about SNAP cuts and who are less concerned about all these people being the perpetrators of waste, fraud and abuse who may want to put more more into the agency going forward. I’ve heard less so from state Republican lawmakers, but there’s a lot of finger-pointing that’s gone around. They say it’s Hobbs’ fault, you know, other Democrats blame the federal government for the changes that they’ve made, etc.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Last 30 seconds here. What do advocates have to say about this? I know we’ve heard a lot about the kids involved in these SNAP cuts. 200,000 is a big number, but, you know, 500,000 people is a lot of people. It must have kind of trickle-down effects.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, advocates have said it’s shocking and that it’s frustrating, and also that nobody really has a safety net in place that can help all of these people. Food banks is something that we’ve talked about, but food banks, you know, weren’t necessarily prepared for the large influx of folks that started, you know, going and relying on them more. And food banks historically don’t provide the same amount of food, literally, that SNAP has provided for families, and so I think that advocates are feeling basically overwhelmed.

LAUREN GILGER: KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez joining us from our politics desk. Camryn, thank you.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.