Published October 2, 2026
October 1, 2026, marked the start of a new federal fiscal year — FY 2027 — and with it, the beginning of one of the major changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) included in the 2025 budget reconciliation law, H.R. 1: the SNAP administrative cost shift.
State SNAP administrative costs, which include staff time, training, technology, communications, outreach, and everything that is not the actual benefit dollars distributed to households, have historically been split evenly between the states and the federal government. H.R. 1 changed this, lowering the federal government’s contribution to 25 percent and raising states’ share to 75 percent. This enormous decrease in federal funding strains state budgets and state programs, and puts pressure on SNAP agencies who are already dealing with increased program complexity as they implement other H.R. 1 changes, such as expanded work documentation requirements and new efforts to bring down payment error rates.
Adequate funding for SNAP admin is critical to making benefits accessible. Without enough staff, phone calls can’t be answered, eligibility interviews can’t be held, verification documents can’t be reviewed and added to the case record, mail cannot be sent out, and applications cannot be processed on time. These are real scenarios playing out across the country right now. In Texas, only 64 percent of SNAP applications and 35 percent of recertifications were processed on time in September. In Arizona, people are getting notices of required interviews in the mail long after the scheduled date had passed. Last month, a class-action lawsuit was filed in Massachusetts charging the department with failure to maintain a functioning SNAP system as SNAP applicants were unable to get calls through to caseworkers.
Every state is facing additional administrative costs, ranging from $3 million in Wyoming to $670 million in California (based on FRAC’s research on each state’s funding needs). But most states are not taking the necessary steps to fully cover those costs. The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) in their summary of FY 2027 proposed state budgets identified only 18 states that had proposed including funding to cover the increased state share of SNAP administrative costs and an additional six that included some mention of SNAP funding, though not specifically to cover the admin costs. For example, North Carolina’s proposed budget “recommends funds to strengthen SNAP and align with new federal requirements.”
This summary only covers proposed state budgets; many things change between the initial proposal and a budget passed by the legislature. Ballotpedia’s analysis of state budgets finds that, overall, 40 states have approved some amount of funding for the administrative cost shift, but notes that many did not approve the full amount needed.
Four states have flat out rejected funding the increase in SNAP administrative costs. Arkansas needed $18 million to cover the gap but did not include that in the state budget. New Hampshire failed to appropriate the $4.4 million needed in that state. New York and North Carolina, both county-administered states, did not include any funding at the state level, leaving counties to fill the gap.
States that appropriated funds that don’t cover the gap left by the federal government include California where the legislature included $223 million in funding for two years even though the state needs an additional $168 million each year; New Jersey, which included $71 million in the state budget despite a gap of $90 million; and Idaho, whose legislature decided that $4.3 million would be enough to cover a $6 million gap. Ohio, a county-administered state, appropriated $12.5 million even though the shortfall is $38 million, and is choosing to divide that evenly among counties, giving each $226,486 without regard to size of the SNAP caseload. This approach leaves Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is the county seat, with a gap of $7 million.
Another group of states included some additional funding for SNAP but did not tie this directly to their increased administrative costs. Massachusetts, for one, included funding to increase caseworker staffing, which is certainly an administrative cost, but their overall spending for caseworkers is 15 percent less for FY 2027 than it was for FY 2026.
Many state budgets are stretched to the max, and SNAP is competing with every other state and county program and policy priority. Even though Wyoming faces the smallest cost shift, the state has struggled to put forward enough funding. The governor’s proposed budget included $5 million for additional SNAP administrative costs, but the budget that passed included only $850,000. Wyoming didn’t just underfund SNAP administration though, the budget that passed fell $143 million short of the governor’s proposal overall and included a $40 million cut to the University of Wyoming. Wake County, North Carolina, is reallocating money from behavioral health services to cover the gap. Every county in Minnesota has moved to raise property taxes, putting economic strain on residents.
And of course, this administrative cost shift is only the beginning of the radical restructuring of SNAP included in H.R. 1 that must be reversed. Starting in FY 2028, just one yeara from now, states will be responsible for a share of SNAP benefit costs, depending on their payment error rate, an even bigger bill that states will have to figure out how to cover.
A reversal of this administrative cost shift and the impending SNAP benefit cost shift is imperative. Pushing more costs onto states erodes their ability to run their SNAP programs and provide critical nutrition benefits to eligible individuals and families.