Fruits are displayed in a grocery store. (Photo: Yereth Rosen, States Newsroom.)
Cuts to federal funding for food stamps are becoming more common in the Ohio Legislature.
For decades, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program divided administrative costs evenly between states and the federal government.
The Trump/Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act changes this split to 75% and 25%, with states bearing the greater burden.
The measure also shifts the cost of benefits to states for the first time.
Given the state’s SNAP error rate, that may be the case on the hook for 5-15% of the benefits.
In the last year on record, only eight states and the U.S. Virgin Islands error rates low enough to avoid additional costs.
Ohio’s error rate was 9%, meaning the state would have to cover one-tenth of its SNAP benefits.
Scientists from Georgetown University estimate Together, these changes will boost Ohio’s SNAP contribution by 268%, bringing the state’s share to more than $530 million.
The added administrative costs will take effect in October of this year, while the benefit cost sharing will take effect the following year.
The immediate shortfall is about $38 million, which goes to counties across the state.
While Republican lawmakers are not ready to cover the full amount, they have proposed providing $12.5 million to soften the blow Ohio House Bill 730.
But their plans to split the money infuriated Democratic lawmakers, who flatly rejected the proposal during a parliamentary debate this week.
What could be fairer than equality?
Ohio House Bill 730 is the so-called capital reappropriation bill. Ohio budgets on a two-year cycle, but many of the projects it funds take longer to complete.
Because lawmakers would like to see the roads, bridges and community centers they paid for actually get built, reappropriation bills that keep dollars flowing are typically uncontroversial.
However, proposed SNAP schedules have changed the calculations for Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Ohio Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, who chairs the Finance Committee, defended the plan, arguing that it treats Ohio’s 88 counties equally.
“It starts with giving the exact same amount to each county, but once the county becomes whole, they get nothing,” Stewart said. “We then take the remaining funds and distribute them equally among all remaining counties until the funds are exhausted.”
In total, he said, 59 counties will not lose a penny.
But $12.5 million divided into 88 pages isn’t a huge amount of money. The most any county would receive under the GOP plan is about a quarter of a million dollars.
Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County could lose $7.5 million in federal administrative funds. Franklin County will lose $5.6 million. Hamilton, Lucas and Montgomery counties could lose more than $2 million each.
But according to Stewart, the GOP plan treats them all equally. Each of them will receive $226,486.
Democrat amendment
Ohio Rep. Munira Abdullahi, D-Colo., proposed an amendment in the House that would allocate dollars based on an existing administrative formula. In brief, money will flow as needed.
As a thought experiment, Abdullahi described a cafeteria in which hungry people sat at two different tables. If there were several hungry people at one table and one hungry person at another, you wouldn’t divide the sandwiches equally between the tables.
“Food doesn’t feed tables or counties,” she said. “It feeds people.”
“This is not a county-versus-county conflict. This is not an urban-versus-rural conflict. This is not a Democrat-versus-Republican conflict,” Abdullahi continued. “It’s about whether we fund public services based on real needs and real caseloads or not – simple as that.”
Abdullahi argued that there was more at stake than county balance sheets. The $38 million Ohio stands to lose in federal administrative funds pales in comparison to the money it could pay in benefits if error rates are too high.
However, keeping error rates low can be complex if the agencies running the program do not have adequate financial resources.
Shortcuts in administering the program mean less money for people who “verify eligibility and enforce work requirements and prevent fraud,” Abdullahi said.
“If we cannot fill the entire $38 million gap today, at least we can make a rational distribution of the limited dollars we have,” she said.
“We shouldn’t set our largest counties up for failure, colleagues. This is a matter not only of integrity, but also of fiscal responsibility.”
Transition
Stewart rejected this idea, arguing that “a handful of metropolitan counties would get the overwhelming majority of the money, and then the smallest rural counties would fight for the leftovers.”
“And let’s be clear that these largest counties where we clutch our pearls have money… period,” he said.
Stewart says that while counties expect the state to cover lost federal revenue, they have significant carryover balances.
“What is this money for,” he asked, “if not to pay for things like this?”
But Ohio Rep. Daniel Troy, D-Willowick, noted that some compact, resource-strapped counties are being penalized for doing exactly what lawmakers encourage them to do.
One argument in the Ohio property tax debate is that local governments should share services.
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“Under this bill, we impose penalties on South Central Jobs and Family Services, which serves Hocking, Ross and Vinton counties,” Troy said.
South Central’s total administrative cost shortfall is only about $386,000, and although it serves three counties, it is treated the same as agencies serving one. The maximum amount they received was $226,486.
“If they hadn’t made the services available, they would have all been restored 100%,” Troy said. “But because these are shared issues, there will actually be a reduction in the funding they receive.”
The House rejected Abdullahi’s amendment and approved the bill by a vote of 66 to 29. A total of four Democrats supported the measure. The proposal now goes to the Ohio Senate.
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