Approximately $83 million and over 290,000 payments in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were delayed in North Carolina from 2021 to 2024, according to an audit released Wednesday from the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor (NCOSA).
SNAP provides benefits to low-income families to support their food budget, including improving access to nutritious food.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 13% (or over 1.4 million) lower-income individuals and families in the state received assistance through SNAP in 2024.
A further breakdown shows that more than 66% of SNAP participants were families with children, more than 34% were families with older or disabled adults, and more than 46% were working families.
The benefits are federally funded and are subject to federal guidelines that must be followed. SNAP applications are certified by county Department of Social Services (DSS) offices. State and local agencies then administer the benefits. Ultimately, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Division of Child and Family Well–Being (DCFW) is responsible for administering the benefits according to federal law.
The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 establishes specific deadlines for processing SNAP applications. Specifically, all eligible households must receive SNAP benefits within 30 days of submitting their application, or within seven days if they are eligible for expedited service. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (USDA FNS) requires that at least 95% of applications be processed within these timeframes.
The audit revealed that during the same time period, the state processed 3.7 million SNAP benefit applications and paid out approximately $15.7 billion in SNAP benefits.
While the statewide performance in issuing SNAP benefit payments in a timely manner was not significantly below the required USDA FNS federal timeliness standard (95%), several counties issued as many as 20-25% of benefit payments in an untimely manner.
Auditors identified seven counties with the worst performance in meeting federal timeliness standards: Davidson, Edgecombe, Wake, Mecklenburg, Pitt, Cumberland, and Stanly counties. They issued between 14% and 25% of benefit payments in an untimely manner.
Findings
During the period from Jan. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021, auditors found that, generally, SNAP benefit payments were made in a timely manner. According to USDA reports, North Carolina issued 466,737 (98%) of SNAP benefit payments in accordance with the federal timeliness standard.
However, they say it was substantially due to the USDA waiving eligibility recertification requirements for most SNAP benefit recipients due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally, SNAP benefit recipients must apply for and have their eligibility recertified every six months to continue receiving benefits.
During the period Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2024, once the recertification requirement was reinstated, auditors found that SNAP benefit payments were not made timely. According to USDA reports, North Carolina issued 2.9 million (91%) of SNAP benefit payments in accordance with the federal timeliness standard.
In addition to the reinstatement of the recertification requirement, NCOSA stated that there were other reasons why benefit payments were not issued in a timely manner.
Division management reported the volume of SNAP applications peaked in the summer months of 2022, with June through August 2022 averaging 75,000 new applications each month, and most likely occurred due to food prices increasing by 9.9% in 2022 (faster than any year since 1979).
Additionally, the division failed to ensure that development plans were implemented, or corrective actions were developed, or enforced for DSS offices when SNAP benefit payments did not meet the timeliness requirements established in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) during the period February 2020 through December 2024.
The division stated that before Jan. 1, 2025, county DSS offices were still required to meet the requirements outlined in the MOU between the department and county DSS offices, such as the 95% timeliness requirement for SNAP benefit payments. However, department leadership decided not to issue formal corrective actions related to MOU performance between Feb. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2024.
Auditors say this decision was initially made due to the impact of COVID-19 on daily business operations and then continued due to the ongoing barriers that counties faced, including Medicaid expansion and workforce shortages.
Lastly, county DSS offices reported that workforce challenges had a significant impact on the timeliness of SNAP benefit payments, especially considering the increase in applications received.
Auditors reviewed documentation for six of the lowest performing counties during the period from Jan. 1, 2022, through Feb. 29, 2024. All six reported significant challenges related to recruiting, retaining, compensating, and training employees. According to Mecklenburg County, even if new staff members are added it “takes approximately nine months for new FNS [SNAP] staff to get up to speed.”
REcommendations
The report recommended the Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Child and Family Well-Being (DCFW):
- Systematically monitor the timeliness of county SNAP benefit payments, including enforcing corrective actions at counties issuing untimely benefits.
- Have ready access to data to effectively administer and monitor SNAP benefits, including the extent (how late) of untimely SNAP benefits and the amount of SNAP benefits paid untimely.
While the division monitors and tracks the timeliness of SNAP benefit payments made in North Carolina, it does not track, and therefore does not know, the extent of untimely SNAP benefit payments (how late the payments were). For example, for Davidson County, the division does not know whether the SNAP benefit payments were paid one day late or 30 days late. Knowing how late SNAP benefit payments were, rather than just the fact that they’re late, could assist the division in allocating resources to focus on counties with a larger number of late payments.
Counties with a larger proportion of significantly late payments may be deemed higher-risk and warrant additional monitoring, oversight, and corrective actions.
State Auditor Dave Boliek’s response
“The State Auditor’s Office is committed to holding government accountable for being efficient,” said State Auditor Dave Boliek in his response to the report. “In this case, despite repeatedly seeing there were delays in the distribution of SNAP benefits, DHHS chose not to enforce corrective actions. It is troubling that DHHS leadership doesn’t believe tracking untimely benefit amounts would improve efficiency. Measuring performance provides transparency and results on the spending of taxpayer dollars.”
DCFW’s Response
While DCFW acknowledged the findings, they noted in their response that they overall remained close to the 95% USDA’s timeliness standard.
Regarding the first recommendation, they stated that, despite not taking corrective action under the MOU for all 100 county DSS offices, DCFW was still actively engaged in overseeing the timeliness of county application processing. They also said the State DSS Continuous Quality Improvement Specialists (CQIS) program was performed during the entire audit scope.
While OSA acknowledges that the CQIS process was conducted, OSA questions the effectiveness of CQIS monitoring without formally requiring or taking corrective action (as recommended in this audit report).
NCDHHS stated they resumed corrective action enforcement activities in April.
DCFW disagreed with a portion of the second recommendation, specifically to analyze the amount of SNAP benefits that were untimely.
The Division said that tracking and analyzing untimely benefit amounts will not have a significant impact on addressing the root causes of untimely certifications, and they are not able to track or analyze the untimely benefit payment amounts. They would also need additional funding to track and evaluate untimely benefit payment amounts.
Boliek stated that the recommendation was made because having ready access to data of the dollar amount of untimely payments could assist with the division’s monitoring and oversight of SNAP.
NCDHHS said it will begin monitoring and tracking the degree of untimeliness, measured by the number of days exceeding SNAP certification timeliness starting in November.
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