Kansas could pay almost $80 million more for its food assistance program after congressional Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

That number could easily increase because the state is only 0.02% below the threshold for paying the largest possible penalty outlined in the bill.

The Trump administration’s new budget bill shifts more costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from the federal government to the states. How much a state pays depends on its error rate — which is when someone’s benefits are overpaid or underpaid.

Here’s how those penalties are calculated: 

• States with an error rate below 6% don’t have to pay a match.
• States with error rates between 6% and 8% must cover 5% of the cost.
• States with error rates between 8% and 10% must cover 10% of the cost. 
• Any state with an error rate above 10% must cover 15% of the cost. 

Kansas has a 9.98% error rate. That’s down from the 12.07% error rate it had in 2023 and below the 10.93% national average. Missouri is at 9.42%, a decrease from 10.54% from the year before. 

The governor’s office told The Beacon in June that Kansas could pay $63 million in additional cost sharing and another $15 million in administrative costs. KCUR reported a revised estimate in July of $41 million in additional cost sharing and $15 million in administrative costs.

How has Kansas lowered its error rate so far? 

Kansas reduced its error rate because it implemented a new case management system and has more robust training, the state said.

Jenalea Randall, director of public and government affairs at the Kansas Department for Children and Families, said the state is now reviewing cases on a statewide basis rather than having each regional office carry every case from that area. 

Spreading out the workload has cleaned up the error rate and reduced wait times, the state said.

Kansas also formed a team dedicated to creating consistent case review processes and identifying errors. Case review teams are crucial to success, multiple states told The Beacon. 

The Beacon spoke with four states that have some of the lowest error rates in the country: Idaho, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. Most of those states have some type of quality control system and rigorous training programs. 

In Vermont, staff members review monthly reports that analyze trends in error rates and offer quarterly performance reports. 

In Wyoming, its staff meets monthly to “learn from every error that was issued since the last meeting,” said agency spokesperson Kelly Douglas.

What else does Kansas need to do to lower SNAP error rates? 

The new Kansas process will help, but DCF officials and other experts said staffing shortages are one key area to address. 

Staff turnover has meant qualified employees left. New staff members come in and make mistakes. In April, Carla Whiteside-Hicks, director of economic and employment services at DCF, said it takes a year to be proficient in the system. 

“There’s a lot of information,” she said at an April meeting. “So we’ve increased the amount of training.”

One common error is incorrectly marking how much people get paid. Staff members must mark how frequently someone is paid, and there are biweekly and semimonthly options. Clicking the wrong box can lead to an incorrect payment.

Other issues left lawmakers more frustrated. Some staff members were not including rent information when approving someone’s benefit amount. Rep. Francis Awerkamp, a St. Marys Republican, said in April that’s a major issue that needs to be addressed. 

“We’re making errors on some of the very most basic elements of the application,” he said. 

Is it possible to keep low error rates? 

There is optimism that better trained staff will drastically reduce the error rate. In the 2010s, Kansas had an error rate above 6% only once, though two years didn’t have accurate data available. The state once had an error rate below 1%. 

Error rates slowly rose in the late 2010s “not just for Kansas, but for every state, and then during the pandemic, it went much higher,” said Dustin Hare, economic security policy adviser with Kansas Action for Children. 

Hare said he’s heard from DCF that they just don’t have enough people to process all these cases and are making mistakes. But hiring can pick back up. 

“It stands to reason that that error rate will come down a little bit naturally,” Hare said during a July press call. 

Gina Plata-Nino, deputy director of staff at the Food Research and Action Center, agrees with Hare that the pandemic still has lasting impacts on SNAP applications. She’s worried that congressional Republicans who approved the new budget bill have created a negative feedback loop. 

States now must do more with less, Plato-Nino said. Overworked staff could make more mistakes, driving the error rate higher. That would mean paying more for SNAP and cutting into state spending. Eventually states may run out of money. 

Republicans see this as an incentive for states to do better, but she disagrees. Forty-four states have an error rate above 6%, meaning almost every state will end up paying additional costs for errors in the programs. 

A few states are below 6% now but were not below 6% in the past year. 

Nebraska and Nevada wouldn’t pay any penalties based on 2024 data, but the two states were above the 6% mark in 2023. The inverse is true for Iowa, which wouldn’t pay based on 2023 error rates but jumped above 6% in the most recent data. 

At some point, Plata-Nino said, states “will have to start making incredibly hard choices between cutting services that are needed for the community … or continuing this program.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated KCUR’s reporting.