ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida is facing a one-billion-dollar penalty if it doesn’t reduce errors in its SNAP program by 2028.
About 3 million Floridians rely on the program so that they don’t go hungry, but right now the sunshine state has one of the highest error rates in the country, with only two states ranking worse than Florida: Georgia and Alaska.
According to the USDA, Florida’s 2024 error rate was over 15 percent.
The error rate measures how accurate the state is when it pays out SNAP benefits, with payment errors including both underpayments and overpayments.
The new penalty is a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which requires states to get their error rates below 6 percent, or pay a share of the costs to fund the SNAP program beginning in 2028.
That funding was previously covered by the Federal Government, but the bill shifts the costs penalizing states with the worst error rates.
If Florida’s error rate is still at 15 percent, the state could be forced to pay 1 billion dollars to keep the SNAP program going.
One way the state is trying to avoid that billion-dollar penalty is by requiring the people on SNAP to upload more documents.
But as 9 Investigates has been reporting for more than a year, problems with the website used to apply for SNAP has made that a huge challenge. Advocates say this likely means some people entitled to benefits won’t get them.
In a hearing back in October, the Department of Children and Families blamed recipients for two-thirds of the errors. Saying they provided wrong or incomplete information which is why more documentation is now required.
“We’re now requiring them to provide that proof of a lease, a mortgage utility bill, so that we can verify that aspect for sheltering in utilities,” said Bridget Royster, Assistant Secretary for the Florida Department of Children and Families Economic Self Sufficiency, back in October.
But for more than a year, 9 Investigates has reported issues with the MyACCESS portal that collects that proof, as people apply for benefits.
We’ve shown you the dropped calls, the website repeatedly down for maintenance, and the documents disappearing after they’re uploaded into the MyACCESS portal.
Channel 9 spoke with Orange County resident Alexis Dancy who went through the SNAP application process over the holidays. She said all of that is still happening.
“I’m uploading the documents. They’re saying they’re not getting it,” said Dancy.
Last year 9 Investigates uncovered records showing the state has known about issues with the online system from the beginning. The vendor that created the portal flagged document upload problems just weeks after it launched, back in 2023.
Community advocate Vanessa Brito has helped thousands of people navigate the portal. She says many users now have to resort to faxing required paperwork instead.
Already overwhelmed caseworkers then have to manually enter it.
“Before we add more work to a broken system, let’s fix what’s broken,” said Brito.
Jared Nordlund is the Florida State Director with the nonprofit Unidos US. He says his non-profit has already hosted listening sessions with about a dozen frustrated case workers. The non-profit now preparing a report for lawmakers to understand what case workers say is driving up the error rate.
“Coming up with a billion dollars is not easy for the state and so that’s why I want to make sure that actually we do everything possible to get that below six percent,” said Nordlund.
Meanwhile, a bill working its way through committees in Tallahassee also directs DCF to get the error rate below six percent.
If passed it would lock in the new documentation rules, mandate quarterly reports on errors, and require the department to submit an improvement plan by July first of this year.
But critics say the bill doesn’t provide funding for system fixes and will shift the burden to applicants.
We reached out to DCF repeatedly to ask whether they believe they will actually be able to reduce the error rate enough to avoid the one-billion-dollar penalty. Or if the fixes might keep some people from getting benefits. They didn’t answer any questions and wouldn’t agree to an interview.
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