State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

States accused of submitting bad food stamp data

Argus Leader: More than 40 states submitted bad data in the federal food stamp program, casting doubt on the accuracy of a key government statistic on erroneous payments to ineligible persons.

The issue has prompted a Department of Justice investigation into some states that intentionally under-reported payment errors in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. By reporting lower error rates, states could then qualify for millions of dollars in federal performance bonuses that they didn’t earn.

The breadth of the problem touched off a full-scale review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – which administers SNAP – into the SNAP Quality Control program. The department was also forced to abandon releasing a national error rate for the last fiscal year because of concerns about the data submitted by 42 states.

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