Illinois SNAP errors could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions

CHICAGO - SNAP benefits are a hot topic and have been since last summer.

That’s when President Donald Trump signed the "Big Beautiful Bill Act" and changed some of the work requirements for SNAP recipients. That conversation is about to heat up again.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is concerned some states are wasting your federal tax dollars when distributing SNAP benefits.

Tonight, in a Unit 32 investigation, Kasey Chronis looks at what they say that's happening, how much waste is in Illinois and what that could mean for all of us.

What they're saying:

Dimitrios Drossos has owned Fresh Living Market on the city's Northwest Side for about 25 years.

"It's, you know, low-income, mostly Hispanic with some eastern European, you know. A lot of hard-working people that rely on SNAP to help, you know, get by and make ends meet," Drossos said.

He said they are also important to his business.

"SNAP is a really integral part of our business. Up to 30% some months comes from SNAP, so it's a big piece," Drossos said.

It’s the same story when it comes to SNAP over at Living Fresh Market in Forest Park.

Janna Rich is the store director.

"It would be a great impact for us. Like I said, it's about 20% of the total payments that we receive and so if that were to go away, we need to repivot and figure out what we're going to do to be able to serve the customer in that way," Rich said.

Store owners and managers like Drossos and Rich said they would also need to figure out how to keep their stores from either laying people off or going out of business all together.

For now, the SNAP program isn't going away, but there could be some big changes coming to how it's funded.

"The federal government passed legislation a year ago that asked all states to bring their error rate down for the SNAP programs to 6 percent. And the state of Illinois's SNAP error rate is incredibly high and continues to go higher. Now, what that means is in another year or so, if we're still at almost 15 percent error rate, that the state of Illinois will have to pay for part of the SNAP program," State Sen. Sue Rezin said.

Rezin has been keeping an eye on what's on the horizon for how SNAP benefits are funded.

She’s been posting about it on her website.

One article stated if Illinois doesn’t get its SNAP error rate below six percent by October 2028, "that could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs."

Some of which Rezin says will have to be used to pay for part of the SNAP program.

"So I mean that's very real money that taxpayers that will either come out of the budget but more than likely will have to come from somewhere else. We all agree that the SNAP program is incredibly important. For the families who need it. Families who need it should be in the program. They should be receiving what is due to them," Rezin said.

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates payment error rates, they look at how much a recipient is being over or under paid.

Illinois SNAP

By the numbers:

In a recent data review, Unit 32 found Illinois has one of the highest SNAP benefit error distribution rates in the country.

It placed sixth behind Georgia, Delaware, New Mexico, the District of Colombia and Alaska in the last fiscal year.

Illinois's 14.67 error rate consists primarily of overpayments being made to SNAP users and just a small portion of under payments to consumers.

"Illinois, that amount last year alone, fiscal year 2025, was nearly $660 million in erroneous payments made by the state of Illinois. And once again, I want to emphasize that's before taking any fraud into account. Just straight error on the state's part cost the American taxpayer $660 million because of Illinois alone," said Stephen Vaden, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

His department doesn’t consider payment errors to be fraud but waste instead. That’s because the USDA says most errors are unintentional and occur when a SNAP user’s information is entered into the system – whether it's by the user or a government employee.

The USDA says Illinois’s nearly 15 percent SNAP error rate breaks down to $660 million federal tax dollars wasted yearly or $1.8 million  a day.

So what happens if Illinois doesn't reduce this rate by October 2028?

"Illinois state taxpayers could be on the hook based on today's numbers for as much as $700 million," Vaden said.

That’s the part of the SNAP program Rezin mentioned taxpayers would have to pay back.

"So we would give Illinois sufficient funds to pay all the benefits that are due to the SNAP beneficiaries, the food stamp beneficiaries in Illinois, and then we would take the total amount of money, which is more than $700 billion, that we pay Illinois on an basis to administer the food stamp program, the back office funds. That allows Illinois not to have to pay for the state employees and other expenses that they incurred ministering the food stamp program on behalf of the federal government. And we would deduct $700 million from that. They wouldn't receive it. So they would have to backfill that out of state tax dollars," Vaden said.

Under the "Big Beautiful Bill" Trump signed last summer, states with an error rate higher than 10 percent are required to pay 15% of SNAP benefit costs starting in October 2027.

States with a rate that's more than 13.5 percent — like Illinois — have until October 2028 to try to reduce their rate before they have to start paying.

Approximately 1.7 million people in Illinois are in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance — or SNAP Program.

Based on what Drossos sees in the checkout line, he says he’s not surprised to hear about Illinois's error rate.

"Customers that have been shopping here for 25 years, and they've never had an issue, and all of a sudden now they're having an issue," Drossos said. "They know how to calculate their budgets, they know how much they're able to spend, and when magically or suddenly out of nowhere they can't spend it anymore, it's not them, there's an issue somewhere."

"Countless times, if I'm sitting in an office right over there by the registers, you know I see someone pulling out money to try and pay for those groceries with two little kids. I can't help but go out there and say, 'You know what, this one’s on me. Just take care of your family," Drossos said.

To make sure SNAP payments are processed properly and user information is accurate, the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked each state agency that oversees its SNAP program to share its users' information with them.

So far, only 29 states have done so. The AG department analyzed that information looking for errors and found much more:

"186,000 people the Social Security Administration told us were dead were receiving SNAP benefits," Vaden said. "We found nearly 400,000 people out of those 29 states who were simultaneously receiving benefits from more than one state, and we found hundreds of thousands of more people who were receiving benefits under a social security number that the Social Security Administration told us has never been issued to a living person in the United States."

Each category totaling hundreds of millions of dollars – this time in fraud.

While Illinois is a state known for dead people voting, it is not one of the 29 states where the deceased are receiving SNAP benefits. That’s because Illinois has not shared its SNAP user data with the USDA.

Instead, it's part of a group of states that is suing the Department of AG to stop it from getting residents SNAP user information.

This group has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Northern California.

"I'm certain there is a lot that the Illinois state government could do with $700 million," Vaden said. "USDA has offered at no cost to the state of Illinois to go through its data and point out things that need to be cleaned up. Instead of taking that free data review. Illinois has spent taxpayer dollars in order to file a lawsuit against USDA to prevent us from looking at their data, all while claiming there's nothing to be worried about."

"SNAP is the most successful tool to end hunger in the United States and so we're gonna fight," said Danielle Perry, the vice president of policy, advocacy and community engagement for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

She heads a team that goes to Springfield and Washington, DC to fight for policies to feed people.

In addition to packing up donations for food pantries, the depository also has outreach specialists who help those in need register for WIC, Medicaid, or SNAP benefits.

"We also do benefit enrollment because we understand that for every meal we can provide in the emergency food system, SNAP provides nine. 1:44

With an 18-page government form to fill out, it's easy for SNAP recipients to make a mistake. That’s why they often need help to make sure their application is filled out properly.

"What does it take to lower the payment error rate?" Perry asked. "What it takes is that states would have to implement strategies to try to make sure they never have errors. They never have a mistake. What does that look like in practice? It could look like right now we ask people to recertify their income or different things once a year. The state may say, we're going to do that every six months now, because if we do it more consistently, We might not have mistakes in changes in income that people may not report as timely as they should. They may say we do this over the phone but now we're going to make every single person come in person to do their interview to turn in their paperwork. How burdensome can you imagine having to come every six months now and in person and another thing they're going do is ask for more paperwork."

Dig deeper:

Vaden mentioned upgrading the outdated computers and other equipment some states have to maintain SNAP user information would help reduce SNAP payment errors.

While Perry agrees better tech can be a step toward fewer errors, she says that’s not really the bottom-line here.

"It's not to reduce fraud or waste. It's not keeping people fed. It is not to keep people in this program, it is to eliminate this program. That is the goal," Perry said.

Vaden said a number of states have been working with the AG department to clean up their SNAP user data – including Ohio, Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

The Illinois Department of Human Services administers the SNAP benefit program here. They declined our request for an interview on this issue.

"We are working with them on a state-by-state basis to clean up their food stamp rolls so that only those who are entitled to receive benefits are receiving benefits, and as little money goes to waste, fraud, and abuse as possible," Vaden said.

Overall, the SNAP program is optional and historically has been paid for by the federal government.

Under the new changes brought by the Big Beautiful Bill, all states must bring their SNAP payment error rate below six percent or start paying for part of the program.

"That means almost every state is now going to be required to pay millions, hundreds of millions to maintain this program," Perry said. "Strategically, if your goal is to eliminate people on the program, that's brilliant. Shift the requirement to the state, knowing the states never had to pay this. No state has ever had to paid from benefits for staff. Hundreds of millions of dollars these states can't honestly afford. None of these states will be able to do this unless they raise revenue or raise taxes."

Perry predicts there will be states that opt of the SNAP program and millions who go hungry because of the decision.

"In a state like Illinois, they're gonna have hard conversations about how to raise the revenue. But in other states across this country, they will opt out," Perry said. "We're looking at almost 2 million people going hungry, 80% of them being children, seniors and people with disabilities."

We asked Rezin what movement she's seen with this issue in the last year in Springfield.

"The governor said that he would work to bring the error rate down, but we haven't seen, we haven't seen legislation, I haven’t seen working groups, I haven't seen any transparency on this program," Rezin said.

We asked the Illinois Department of Human Services and the governor’s office about what they are doing to reduce the state’s SNAP error rate and what could happen to the program in Illinois if it's not below six percent in two years.

IDHS sent us a statement that says, in part, "We cannot speculate about future SNAP financing or costs" and that "Illinois has launched an aggressive, multi-year effort to improve payment accuracy and protect taxpayers from future federal fiscal exposure."

The governor's office told us they did not have any additional information to add.

Statement from the Illinois Department of Human Services

The other side:

"H.R.1 is a deliberate effort by the federal government, for the first time, to push the federal food program’s benefits costs on the states, stop customers from receiving SNAP food benefits, and let families go hungry. We cannot speculate about future SNAP financing or costs. What is clear is that Illinois would not be facing these financial obligations if the federal government had not changed the longstanding financing structure through H.R.1. SNAP benefits were 100% federally funded for more than 50 years before Congress enacted this new cost-sharing requirement."

"Illinois has launched an aggressive, multi-year effort to improve payment accuracy and protect taxpayers from future federal fiscal exposure. That work includes policy changes, enhanced staff training, additional caseworkers, technology improvements, and even stronger quality assurance measures. Early internal indicators suggest these efforts are reducing payment errors. Many of the errors that federal sampling is finding were made before the federal government passed H.R. 1 and changed the rules. Rather than working collaboratively with states to improve payment accuracy, H.R.1 imposes unprecedented financial penalties while simultaneously requiring states to implement sweeping changes to both SNAP and Medicaid on compressed timelines designed by the federal government to create more errors and to take food and healthcare away from families."