Arizona faces potential $208M penalty over food stamp errors

The Arizona Center for Economic Progress, which lobbies to put more dollars into public programs, says that the error rate is not necessarily related to fraud or cheating.

“These errors can include cases in which an eligible family received slightly too much or too little assistance because of a processing delay, a mistake by an eligibility worker, incomplete information, or problems with a computer system,” the organization said in a press release June 24.

It also warns that even if Arizona does escape federal penalties, what’s in HR 1 will still result in higher costs for the state. That’s because federal law also shifts more of the responsibility of administering the food stamp program to states, regardless of the error rates.