The Department of Transitional Assistance has added 122 new employees, 80 of which are new caseworkers specifically assigned to the state’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, as public benefits fraud has skyrocketed across Massachusetts and as the state’s SNAP payment error rate remains among the highest in the country.
Gov. Maura Healey included $41.7 million in a supplemental budget filed in January “for Department of Transitional Assistance staffing, supporting caseworkers responsible for administering core assistance programs, and implementing recent federal eligibility changes.” The supplemental budget was engrossed into law on March 18.
“In addition to these policy measures, the bill includes supplemental appropriations for a limited number of time-sensitive deficiencies that we would like to address prior to April 30, in some cases to avoid service disruptions,” Healey said in a Jan. 29 letter detailing her supplemental budget to Legislative leadership. “Filing for these amounts now will allow us to avoid program shutoffs, delayed payments, or other avoidable consequences.”
Those consequences include Massachusetts paying back the federal government a portion of the total amount of taxpayer funds lost to SNAP payment errors.
In FY24, Massachusetts recorded a whopping 14.1% payment error rate in its SNAP program, one of the worst in the country for a total of $364 million in erred payments that year. Statistics for FY25 are not yet available.
But a DTA whistleblower, who surfaced allegations of “rampant” fraud within the state’s food stamp program and lackluster efforts to stop it, tells the Herald the additional workers will not help further root out SNAP fraud in Massachusetts nor help to repair the state’s payment error rate and other poor program integrity metrics.
“The changes truly needed at the DTA are more systemic and infrastructure related. The new staff, though needed, can’t integrate well because it’s too chaotic for proper transition. Our computers and phones aren’t adequate for our numbers so there’s a backlog, continued theft and low morale due to stress. The top keeps pushing problems down without owning its blind allegiance to leadership and its wild decisions like recouping funds from people after 6 years of errors are being thrust on us to ‘plug the damn,’” the whistleblower said.
“[U.S. Attorney Leah] Foley made it pretty clear that, no matter how well-intended and dedicated workers are, the system is off the rails. That’s a leadership problem. It’s a stubborn administration refusing to work with the Feds and has already lost federal support because of the error rate. Workers will always do their best to follow protocol and help the person in front of us over and over, but we’re doing it with inadequate infrastructure and sophisticated thieves still running circles around us,” they said.
In fact, the state’s payment error rate has been so poor in recent years that even the Biden administration’s USDA urged Healey to clean up the food stamp program and get its numbers back to “acceptable” levels.
A letter from the USDA, dated Feb. 8, 2024, urged Healey to improve and bring to “acceptable” levels the DTA’s payment error rate, case and procedural error rate, and its application processing timeliness, adding that all three didn’t meet “basic federal requirements” in FY22 under the Baker admin.
“I urge you to prioritize these concerns and take appropriate steps to make sure that your State has an acceptable application processing timeliness (APT) rate, payment error rate (PER), and case and procedural error rate (CAPER) and meets basic Federal requirements,” the letter from Biden’s USDA said.
Healey slightly improved the state’s SNAP payment error rate in FY23 during her first year as governor, bringing it from 11.7% in FY22 to 9.86% in FY23. But in FY24, after the federal state of emergency for the pandemic had ended, the payment error rate skyrocketed to 14.1% – among the worst states in the country. Massachusetts received over $2.6 billion, or more than $240 million per month, in federal SNAP funding that year, equating to $364 million in erred payments, of which, $338 million was in overpayments. Only six states had higher payment error rates than Massachusetts that year. Complete data from FY25 is not yet available.
Pressed by the Herald earlier this month on the FY24 numbers, Healey pointed to changes made during the Biden administration during the pandemic, and claimed that the state’s payment error rate “is going down.”
“I think there’s just some hangover from COVID, and that’s why you continue to see payment error rates around the country. The important thing to me is that that is going down in Massachusetts, and we’re going to continue to do everything that we need to do,” Healey said.
The DTA told the Herald that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government directed states to prioritize rapid access to benefits and implement broad waivers that reduced verification processes, with an agency spokesperson adding “that approach was intentional and appropriate, it prevented hunger and stabilized families during an emergency.”
Healey claimed that allegations of fraud in Massachusetts, labeled by President Donald Trump during the State of the Union address as among the most fraud-ridden states, are simply a “distraction” by the president to shift focus away from what she says are his failed policies.
This as Healey refuses to hand over SNAP recipient information, including immigration status, to the Trump administration and the USDA in order to root out waste, fraud and abuse. Healey’s office says the Trump administration has not provided assurances the information will not be given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley has named a new Benefit and Voter Fraud Team in her office to crackdown on benefit fraud in the Bay State, including SNAP fraud, MassHealth fraud, childcare subsidy fraud and voter fraud.
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