NM U.S. Rep. Vasquez, a Democrat, urges state Health Care Authority to bring down SNAP error rate

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) sent a letter Friday chiding state leaders for errors administering a federal food assistance program and urging them to implement fixes to avoid a federal penalty of at least $149 million. 

The letter to Health Care Authority Secretary Kari Armijo and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham reminded state leaders that the budget bill President Donald Trump signed last year imposes stiff penalties for states that have a high rate of over- or underpayments to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients. 

Vasquez said he disagrees with many provisions of the Republican spending bill also known as H.R. 1, including provisions that impose “drastic cuts to programs such as Medicaid and SNAP to fund tax cuts for American billionaires.” But he also stressed that the state needs to work swiftly to ensure it is not misappropriating taxpayer funds when it sends food payments to the roughly one-in-five New Mexico residents who participate in SNAP.

“When New Mexicans pay their taxes, they deserve to know that their hard-earned dollars are being spent responsibly, lawfully, and for the good of the public. We must do better to maintain the public’s trust in government,” wrote Vasquez, who is running for re-election for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District against Republican Greg Cunningham. 

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, New Mexico’s error rate was 16.8% in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 of last year. The vast majority of those errors came from overpayments to SNAP recipients, according to data the USDA released last week. 

New Mexico’s rate ranks far above the national average of about 10.6% and is the third highest in the country, according to the new USDA data, behind only Alaska (23.2%) and the District of Columbia (18.7%). 

The federal budget bill requires states with high error rates to use state funds to pay for a percentage of SNAP payments to recipients in a program that is otherwise 100% federally funded. Under the bill, states like New Mexico with error rates higher than 13.3% have additional time to bring down their rates, but they must reduce their rates to below 6% to avoid any penalties. 

A recent Legislative Finance Committee evaluation focused on the Health Care Authority’s efforts to reduce its error rate and combat SNAP fraud found that the state could be penalized as much as $173 million if it fails to drastically reduce its error rate over the next two years. 

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Armijo told lawmakers during a hearing June 16 that she is implementing a plan to reduce the error rate, including targeting specific field offices that have a particularly high rate of errors; improving data sharing to ensure benefits are paid correctly based on household size and income; and boosting the use of artificial intelligence to ensure accuracy overall. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, in a statement Sunday to Source NM, said she spoke with Vasquez on Friday regarding the state’s error rate and said while she shares “his commitment to protecting SNAP for New Mexicans,” it was clear to her “that he didn’t have all the facts before he wrote the letter, which she said cited “inaccurate data” and based its findings on LFC recommendations “that were already completed or are well underway at the Health Care Authority.”

In her statement, she said the LFC provided “ inaccurate data about what New Mexico owes the federal government”— namely that the maximum penalty is roughly $150 million, not $173 million — and said at present the state doesn’t owe “anything related to the new federal SNAP provisions at this time, and as we reduce our error rate, the penalty will diminish.”

But she said the state is doing its best to avoid any federal penalties, despite a new federal law that makes doing so “nearly impossible, particularly when the same law is cutting the federal support states need to do that work.” 

She urged Congress to help the state reduce its staffing shortage, which she said is making addressing the error rate even more difficult. 

“We are committed to reducing the error rate, but New Mexicans deserve to know that the biggest threat to their food assistance isn’t an error rate — it’s a federal law written to make these programs harder to administer and easier to cut,” she said.