March 31, 2026
The Massachusetts Department of Transition Assistance (DTA) has spent the first few months of the year adding capacity ahead of a looming deadline from the federal government. In recent months, DTA has added 80 caseworkers, worked to fill vacant positions, and invested in improvements for phone and internet services. All of this to address administrative challenges related to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides access to food for more than one million Massachusetts residents. In addition to improving responsiveness to applicants, the state hopes to avoid hefty financial penalties from the federal government by lowering the SNAP payment error rate before the end of the fiscal year.
The SNAP payment error rate quantifies the percent of over- and underpayments made to recipients. It is important to differentiate between payment errors, which are unintentional and related to processing errors, and fraud, which involves intentional misrepresentation. In Massachusetts, payment error rates were between 4-6% prior to the pandemic but have risen to 10-15% in recent years. Federal government shutdowns, changing eligibility requirements, and administrative bottlenecks at the state level all contribute to the increased rates.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 enacted cost sharing efforts that penalize states for high payment error rates; states with elevated error rates will be required to pay hundreds of millions of dollars back to the federal government. The penalty will be assessed based on the error rate at the end of the fiscal year.