The federal government will pay less to help Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs run starting on Thursday.
Historically, SNAP administrative costs have been shared by the federal government and the state. But, under the Trump administration’s HR1, or “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the portion the federal government covers will go down.
On Oct. 1, the federal government will cover 25% of administrative costs, rather than 50%.
Around 1.4 million Ohioans are enrolled in the program that provides low-income people monthly funds for groceries.
Ohio is estimated to have an immediate loss of around $38 million. Those funds are distributed to county Jobs and Family Services departments, which manage SNAP locally.
Metro areas face largest gaps
To prepare for these losses, the Ohio legislature budgeted a bit more for administrative needs, allocating around $12.5 million in March to offset counties’ losses.
In the past, the state used the number of caseloads and county poverty levels to determine how much each county gets. This time around, the legislature decided to split the funds equally among counties. Each county will receive $226,486, or – if a county lost less than that – the amount it takes to fill their gap.
Under this system, 59 counties’ budgets will be made whole again. But many of the state’s metro counties, which have bigger SNAP caseloads, will have to replace millions of dollars.
Cuyahoga County will face the largest gap, losing an estimated $7 million.
Republican lawmakers argued that these metro counties have enough in their general funds to step in, while rural counties did not.
“The bill treats all counties equally,” Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) said on the House floor in March. “These largest counties we are clutching pearls over have the money.”
Potential impact
In Lucas County, where Toledo is, administrators say they are grappling with around a $2.5 million loss.
JFS Director Breda Osburn said it won’t be easy to replace, since the county’s funding is siloed and inflexible. Osburn and her staff don’t have the ability to move funding from programs that may be utilized less and funnel it to SNAP, which has around 69,000 participants.
Lucas County commissioners have stepped up to fill the gap this year. But, with rising costs, Osburn said that likely won’t be sustainable in the long-term.
She said the only significant way to shrink the JFS budget would be to cut staff.
“That would create much longer turnaround times for eligibility processing. It would create much longer wait times on the phones,” Osburn said. “It would also very likely drive up errors in the determination of benefit amounts.”
More changes ahead
The administrative cost shift is just one of the changes to SNAP under HR1. There are also added work requirements and changes to eligibility based on immigration status.
Starting next year, the state will be evaluated on its error rate, which tracks when a household receives either an overpayment or an underpayment of $57 or more.
If Ohio has an error rate of 6% or higher, then the state will have to pay a portion of the SNAP benefits themselves, which have typically been completely covered by the federal government.
In 2024, the state’s error rate was around 9%. Last year, the state’s error rate was just over 6%. If it were to remain at that level next year, Ohio would have to pay for 5% of benefit costs, which could add up to around $161 million, according to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio.
Osburn said the state reviews only a small fraction of cases to calculate the error rate, which she believes it’s not representative of the accuracy of the program.
“It’s really luck of the draw,” she said.
