County to beef up FoodShare oversight

A committee of Ozaukee County supervisors voted Tuesday to add two part-time economic support specialists to the Health and Human Services Department to help  maintain quality assurance in its food and nutrition programs.

Hiring the two part-time workers is necessitated by Congress’ passage last year of HR1, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which enacted reductions in funding to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which serves as a safety net for individuals with food insecurity.

The bill also mandates that states pay 5% to 15% penalty of its total FoodShare benefit amount back to the federal government when errors — underpayments or overpayments — are 6% of the total.

That means the total for Wisconsin could top $20 million, according to a memo to the Health and Human Services Committee from HHS Director Kimberly Falkner.

The current rate of errors in Ozaukee County is low, perhaps around 2%, officials said.

“Ozaukee County has one of the lowest rate of errors,” Falkner told the committee on Tuesday.

“The state of Wisconsin has an error rate of about 4.8%,” County Human Resources Director Chris McDonell said.

And, Falkner added, her department reacted proactively with the passage of HR1 by assigning a manager in October to oversee quality assurance.

Most common errors involve reporting household income or living in one county but working and shopping in another, making expenditures more difficult to track and verify, Falkner said.

McDonell said he did not think the restrictions address issues of potential fraud.

Ozaukee County has about 1,900 FoodShare clients, Falkner said. FoodShare is Wisconsin’s name for the federal food stamp program.

Ozaukee County’s is part of the Moraine Lakes Consortium that also includes Walworth, Waukesha, Washington and Fond du Lac counties, whose economic support agencies handle public assistance programs like FoodShare, BadgerCare Plus, Medicaid and child care subsidies.

The two staffers will be Ozaukee County employees but will serve clients in the entire consortium when working in the program call center.

In addition to helping in the call center, the new staffers also will help other staff members complete and verify documentation.

Salaries and benefits for the two half-time staffers will total more than $88,000, which will be paid for by the state through 2027, thanks to passage of Act 116 by the Legislature.

The state funding is set to expire after 2027, but McDonell said the Wisconsin Counties Association “has made it one of their priorities to extend these positions.”

“We’ll have to look at whether we (the county) can sustain it in our budget” if the state doesn’t extend funding, Falkner said.