Staff turnover, complex federal rules and inconsistent verification efforts have contributed to a rising payment error rate in the state’s food-assistance program, which is facing federal penalties if its error rate doesn’t improve, a new audit says.
The audit found that the state’s payment error rate has exceeded the federal limit of 6% since 2019, climbing to its highest level in 20 years in 2023 when it reached about 12%. State officials say it’s now about 9.1% in the current federal fiscal year.
Kansas’ payment error rate was 10% in 2024, less than the national average. In that year, the national payment error rate was 10.9%, the audit said.
While Kansas’s overall error rate was less than the national average, it was slightly higher than its four neighboring states, which had an average error rate of 8.9%.
The audit said that during 2024, only eight states – Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming – had payment error rates of less than the federal requirement of 6%.
Sixteen states had payment error rates similar to Kansas, ranging from 8.1% to 10%.
Starting in October 2027, Kansas will have to start matching food-assistance benefits based on its payment error rate, which assesses the accuracy of state eligibility and benefit determinations for households that receive food-assistance benefits.
The payment error rate measures the accuracy of eligibility for the benefit as well as the amount of the benefit. It gauges whether errors are made in items like income and shelter costs. It also relates to whether information is submitted accurately by the beneficiary.
The overpayment errors are consistently significantly greater than the underpayment errors. For instance, in 2024, the overall payment error rate was about 10%. Of that, the overpayment error rate was 9.4% compared to the underpayment rate of 0.55%.
With its current error rate, the state is facing the possibility of paying $40 million in penalties to the federal government.
The audit emphasized that the payment error rate is not necessarily related to fraud.
“It is important to note that not all errors are fraud,” the audit said.
“Fraud requires deliberately misrepresenting, concealing, or omitting information to gain a benefit,” the audit said.
“Although some applicants may knowingly falsify their information, it’s also likely that genuine human error occurs during the application process.
“Basic human error is typically not considered fraud,” the audit said.
The audit focused on the causes of the state’s payment errors for food-assistance in fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
The audit said that the Department for Children and Families can make errors at many points while processing and verifying food-assistance applications.
Some applications are submitted on paper, which require hand-entering information into an eligibility enforcement system, which creates opportunities for mistakes such as transposing numbers.
The number of rules or circumstances that must be considered is significant, auditors said.
The manual that provides policies and rules to DCF staff who are processing and verifying food-assistance applications is nearly 700 pages long.
DCF also provides several other matrices, scripts and guides that all contain additional information that must be considered.
“Every rule that must be applied creates an opportunity for an error,” the audit said.
“Additionally, some of the eligibility rules are complicated,” the audit said. “The more complex and nuanced the rules, the more likely errors are to occur.”
The audit noted that applicants can also make mistakes when they seek food-assistance benefits.
The application includes other federal assistance programs. The application is 36 pages long with more than 200 questions.
“Applicants can transpose numbers or misunderstand questions and provide the wrong information,” the audit said.
“For those whose primary language is not English, an interpreter can be provided but language barriers also create opportunities for errors,” auditors said.
For 2023 and 2024, auditors reviewed about 300 errors that contributed to the state’s payment error rate and were related to miscalculating an applicant’s income and resources.
Over those two years, the Department for Children and Families attributed about half of the errors to its staff. The agency said its staff was responsible for 51% of the errors in 2023 and 45% in 2024.
The agency attributed the other half of the errors to applicants, including information related to items staffers may not have verified in their review of individuals’ applications.
“For example, we saw some payments where an individual did not report the number of household members accurately, did not report they were receiving benefits in other states, or misreport they were receiving benefits in other states, or misreported expenses.”
The audit classified the mistakes this way (the percentages do not add up to 100% because some payments had multiple errors):
- 59% of the payments had at least one error related to the recipient’s income and resources. Some of these errors included recipients who did not report all their wages or Social Security income. This category also included errors DCF staff made.
- 33% of the payments had at least one error related to an allowed expense. This includes applicants who did not accurately report expenses such as child care or rent. There also were errors in which DCF staff misapplied utility expense allowances or did not properly include medical expenses.
- 17% of the payments had at least one non-financial error. For example, auditors saw a student who was incorrectly reported as part of the household, a noncitizen who was granted benefits and an incomplete application that DCF accepted.
Over two years, about 84% of the errors resulted in overpayments to SNAP recipients, including 113 payments to households that did not qualify for food assistance benefits.
The other 16% were underpayments, the audit said. The average overpayment was $292 per month while the average underpayment was $111 per month.
DCF officials told auditors that recent turnover rates among the staff who process applications has been about 30%.
Additionally, they said it takes about a year for staff to be fully trained in processing and verifying applications.
“Significant turnover leads to a consistent influx of new people who may not yet have the necessary experience to accurately process applications,” the audit said.
Social Service Secretary Laura Howard recently told lawmakers that Kansas is making progress toward lowering its payment error rate for the federal food-assistance program in an effort to save the state from paying millions in penalties.
Howard expressed optimism about bringing down the error rate, noting that in 2019 the state had an error rate of 7.1%, in 2018 the state had an error rate of 5.86% and it had a rate of 3.85% in 2017.
Howard said the state has been studying the monthly payment error rates, which show some improvement.
The error rate for October 2024 through August 2025 – the first 11 months of the federal fiscal year – was 9.13%.
For the first seven months of the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, the state had an error rate of 10.23%. The cumulative error rate for the last four months was at about 7%.
The agency reported that the error rate was 6.7% in May, 7.89% in June, 9.53% in July and 5.5% in August.
The cumulative error rate for the last four months was at about 7%, she said.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” she said. “We need to keep at it, working as hard as we can.”
