Joint Public Health
December 8, 2025
Senator Missy Irvin All right, if everybody can take their seats. All right. Good morning, everybody. If everybody will take their seats, we’re going to go ahead and get started. Calling our committee on Public Health, Welfare and Labor to order.
I need a motion to consider approval of the minutes. And second. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. And opposed. Ayes have it. The motion carries. Minutes are approved. All right. We’re moving right down our agenda. Item C.
I’d like to welcome Dr. Tackett, if he could come to the table real quick. I saw this on Arkansas Business and wanted to get an update. I think it’s important. The legislature has invested a lot into our Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and National Cancer Institute designation. This discussion and announcement of this award is a big deal towards that end.
So thank you so much for changing your schedule last minute when I reached out to be here to give us just a really brief update and discussion about what is happening here with this. Thank you. If you’ll just introduce yourselves both for the record, then please proceed.
Alan Tackett Okay, thank you for the invitation. Alan Tackett, professor, biochemistry at UAMS and deputy director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
Andy Davis Andy Davis with UAMS.
UAMS Biomarker Testing Grant
Alan Tackett Okay, so I’m going to give you– first of all, I appreciate the opportunity to come speak today. I’m going to overview a recent grant that was awarded to UAMS, where I’m the lead investigator. And then I’ll be happy to answer questions, obviously, at the end. This grant is from the National Institutes of Health. It funds an entity that exists at UAMS and within the Cancer Center. It’s called the National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that as I explain this grant.
First, this resource that operates on our campus is the first and the only National Institutes of Health national resource ever in Arkansas. So we are a very unique entity that not necessarily a lot of people know about that. This grant will support the next five years of our operation, giving us 10 years of continuous support from the National Institutes of Health. And this will be a $10.5 million award that will help support us for the next five years.
Our operation employs 12 local Arkansans. We have high-end computational infrastructure and about $20 million of equipment. We are the largest academic or commercial resource provider of our kind in the world. Before I tell you about the resource, I do want to thank the Arkansas state. You all have contributed towards the development of this resource over the past two decades. And I’ve been at UAMS for the past two decades as a professor. And funding from the state through the National Cancer Institute Designation Act, the Arkansas Biosciences Institute, as well as Arkansas Research Alliance has helped us grow this operation to a national resource.
So, what we do, we provide nationwide access to technology, as well as local expertise for the discovery of new disease biomarkers. I think many people understand what biomarkers are, but these are measurable indicators that are found in your body. It could be in your blood, your urine, or your tissue that tell a doctor about your current health status.
They’re used in clinical assays to screen, diagnose, prognose, and create personalized treatment regimens for patients. Some examples could be our prostate-specific antigen, when men will, at a certain age, get screened for PSA. And that’s a biomarker for prostate cancer. And even when you get lipid panels measured at your primary care position, those are biomarkers for cardiovascular-related diseases.
So we provide the development of assays for those clinical biomarker assays that are performed within the clinics. We have impact at the national, as well as at the local level in terms of the United States. We support thousands of National Institutes of Health-funded laboratories across every state in the United States. So thousands of research laboratories send their samples to us for biomarker assay development. This supports hundreds of millions of NIH dollars across every state in the United States.
We develop 10,000 different assays every year. And of course, development of these assays allow physicians to detect disease early on and treat it earlier on, which that obviously compounds into cost savings for health care.
For Arkansas impact, our local economic impact here in central Arkansas is in the tens of millions of dollars. We support development of biomarkers that impact Arkansans, particularly for chronic diseases that are the major killers for Arkansans, like cancer, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, as well as other diseases and infectious diseases like influenza and tick-borne diseases also.
So we function to develop assays that help Arkansans. We support community outreach efforts across every corner of the state. And we also have specialized programs for local workforce development and retention of talent within Arkansas. We have undergraduate internships to train our young scientists and hopefully keep them here in Arkansas. And for others doing biomedical research in the state, we provide subsidized access to our resource.
And finally, we are a key resource in the application for National Cancer Institute designation, which is ongoing at UAMS. So we play a key role in supporting every cancer researcher within the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Institute. So with that overview, I’m happy to answer any questions anyone might have.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Again, I just really thought it was so important to give us an update and just a description of this to inform the legislature about the fact that you’re leading the nation and just so exciting and to focus on the science side of things. A lot of times we focus on the healthcare side of things.
But it was important for me to recognize your work and just say thank you for the work that you’ve done for the past two decades. The science part is incredibly important to the healthcare that we provide. So with that, again, just appreciate the update. Are there any questions from anyone in the legislature? Yes. Representative Allen.
Representative Fred Allen Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Doctor Tackett, for being here. Thank you for all the good work that you’re doing with biomarkers. What is the average cost of a biomarker test?
Alan Tackett Yeah, so we, again, we’re on the development end of the space, where we’re developing biomarker assays. Now, for us to develop assays, you’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars on the development phase. And then, of course, you’re going to have to translate that towards the clinic.
Now, to run a clinical assay, it depends on the assay. You could be in the hundreds of dollars to the thousands of dollars. If you’re running a lipid panel, it’s obviously less expensive. PSA biomarker screening is fairly inexpensive. But there are some genetic biomarkers where you can test for certain mutations for given cancers. So it depends on the particular assay, but hundreds to thousands of dollars for an assay.
Representative Fred Allen Okay, thank you.
Alan Tackett You’re welcome.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Are there any other questions? All right. Seeing none– oh, yes. Hold on. Sorry. Representative Springer.
Representative Joy Springer Good morning. And thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Allen is being modest, as well as Senator Wallace. They’re the representatives and senators that introduced this to help cost savings for the state of Arkansas with respect to cancer research. So I think that we should give them an applause as well.
Senator Missy Irvin Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, Representative Allen and Senator Wallace. They did some good legislation as it related to this, which is another reason why I thought it would be good for us to have a report on this from you. So I appreciate the hard work of Representative Allen.
Of course, his personal testimony and journey has been important to that policy development. But what you’re doing is really also incredibly important to our policy development, too, to make sure that patients have access to the hard work that you put in.
So helping us to know that this is happening and informs us to make sure that we continue on that path of providing access for patients to have the ability to have their biomarkers tested and have that be a reasonable cost. So appreciate you very much. Any other questions? Thank you for being here. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right. Next we will move on to item D, Department of Human Services. If you will all please come to the table.
Mary Franklin Good morning. I’m Mary Franklin, Director of the Division of County Operations for Arkansas Department of Human Services.
Janet Mann Good morning. Janet Mann, DHS Secretary.
Misty Eubanks Good morning, Misty Eubanks, Deputy Secretary, DHS.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. You may proceed.
SNAP
Shutdown Update
Janet Mann Thank you. I’ll give a quick update on SNAP, and Mary and Misty can answer with lots of details if there are questions. So SNAP is fully functional. We are up to speed. After the government shutdown ended, I think it took us approximately two business days. We were able to pay November benefits. That was approximately a week later than normal. But we are operational on SNAP. And I’ll defer to the details with Miss Franklin.
Mary Franklin That’s correct. I think by November 13th, we were able to get the benefits that we had been instructed to hold issued. We got final guidance from FNS not to do partial, but we were cleared to issue full benefits. We had not yet issued any partial benefits, so we were able to just get the full benefits out the door as we would normally have. And then just on a daily basis from since then, we approve new cases and issue the benefits they’re entitled to. And effectively back to normal operations with SNAP.
Senator Missy Irvin So a lot of us are following what’s happening in states like Minnesota. We obviously are compliant with the federal government, is that correct, with submitting all of our information to make sure that there’s no fraud happening within our benefits? We’re fully compliant on that?
Mary Franklin Yes, we have been cooperative with any requests for data that have come from our federal partners related to the new focus on that and their work to compare state to state data in a way that states have not been able to compare it. And then, so we are cooperative and have been responsive through that process.
Senator Missy Irvin Okay. And then did we expend any money, whether it be state or federal, towards retooling through all this kind of chaos when you were getting direction? That was just a question that I’d had, because I know that we have vendors that we work with through contract. But you were getting changing direction. So did that throw us off any? Did we spend money to have to retool and then retool back?
Mary Franklin We definitely were working with our system integrator, which is Deloitte, and they had been working to make those calculation changes in the SNAP benefits and implement that in our system. But as part of maintenance and operations, we did not get a change request that we had to pay or expend additional funds for that. And one thing I will say is if we are faced with something like that in the future, we have some functionality now that hopefully could make us more responsive more quickly.
Senator Missy Irvin Okay, that’s good. That’s good to know. So it was already part of what was negotiated in the contract under maintenance and operations. So it wasn’t a different change order that would cost us more money?
Mary Franklin That’s correct.
Senator Missy Irvin Okay, that’s good to know. All right. Representative Ray.
SNAP Error Rate and Increased Cost Burden
Representative David Ray Thank you, Madam Chair. Secretary Mann, I think you’ve addressed this before, but I’m asking because I need a refresher. So the provision that the federal government has passed about states taking on a portion of the cost for SNAP if their error rate is above a certain threshold, can you remind me, what’s that threshold? Is it 5 percent?
Janet Mann No, sir. It’s 6 percent, and that is correct. There’s actually two provisions in the new bill from HR 1. The states will take on an additional admin cost starting, I believe, October 1 of ’26 for that year, which will add an additional 25 percent for admin. That is not dependent on anything else.
The second piece is what you were asking me about. That is error rates under 6 percent will have no additional cost to benefits for the states. After that, there are bans or ranges of the percentage of what the states will have to contribute for those benefits. And I believe that starts October 1 of 2027 for the federal fiscal year ’28.
Representative David Ray Okay, and what is Arkansas’ current error rate on SNAP?
Mary Franklin We are at 7.01 percent. We are still working to finish the reviews required for federal fiscal year ’25. And we are about 82, almost 83 percent– wait, close to 88 percent complete. So about 12 percent more of the cases to still be finalized in that review process to know what our overall number is actually going to be. But we’re at 7.01. And I can tell you that we finished federal fiscal year ’24 at 9.56. So we are making improvements. We have not yet gotten below 6, but we are continuing to work on that to keep bringing that rate down.
Representative David Ray Okay. And do you have an estimate of what the cost would be to the state at 7 percent and what the cost would be at 9.56 percent?
Mary Franklin So if we are above 6 based on the average amount of benefits that we have issued over the last 12 months, above 6 percent would be around a $25 million cost. I don’t have the math for beyond that, but we can certainly get that to you. And I would just say that this is an estimate. Of course, it’s based on how many households receive SNAP, how much are the benefits, and also the error rate.
Representative David Ray Okay. Yeah, if you could work up what the cost would be to the state at 9.5 or whatever the previous year was, that would be helpful. And I appreciate you responding to that. And I look forward to learning more about what the department’s doing to lower our error rate.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Representative Bentley.
Representative Mary Bentley Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, ladies. On that point there with our error rate, are we getting any guidance from the federal government to help on what we can do to decrease our error rate? Is there anything that we’re doing? Are we getting any assistance or guidance or recommendations on what we can do to get where we need to be?
Mary Franklin We have a corrective action plan that we’re actively working with FNS that they review and approve. But I actually left a meeting with my team right before this meeting where we are actively reviewing where we’re at, what are the causes of the errors that we are finding, and what we can do to prevent them.
So I can tell you that we do the required reviews as part of the quality control process. But we also do what we call second party reviews, which is just cases that our supervisory staff review to see how we’re doing, to see what errors we are finding before the quality control process finds it. And then we make adjustments based on that. We have done that all along.
We’re launching a new initiative we talked about this morning where, based on those quality control reviews and the outcomes of those second party reviews, if there are particular caseworkers or particular areas like income deductions, household composition that we’re finding problems in so that we can target reviews specific to those places where we’re having issues.
We have always done training, but we’re doing a more formalized approach to refresher training that everyone has to take. And we’re doing that monthly. And it may be like a one-hour long web-based training that workers can do on their own. Or we’re doing like quarterly and instructor-led portion of that training where they spend close to a day focusing on a particular problem area.
We also have a team of investigators, special investigators that our staff make referrals to. And so anything we learn through our review process or through the quality control errors in general that could inform better referrals for cases to be investigated for errors on the client side, we’re doing that as well.
We’re also doing something new. We revitalized something that happened years ago, where in conjunction with the refresher training that we’re doing with our staff, we are sending out Prevention in a SNAP. We’re calling it Prevention in a SNAP. And it’s in very plain language explaining to staff these are the latest errors we found, and these are things that we can do to prevent them in the future.
And we partnered with our communications team at DHS and there’s a QR code on those notices that go out to our staff where they can give us feedback if they have recommendations or suggestions on things that we can do to help prevent those kinds of errors. We’re taking that feedback, giving that opportunity for staff to be more involved in helping us come up with ideas on additional things that we can do to prevent the errors. So we’re working on it on many fronts.
Janet Mann And I would also like to add we have reached out to other states that have lower error rates to inquire what are they doing, how are they doing things differently to see if there’s a process or a procedure that we are not doing or paying attention to.
But in addition, I think it’s important to note that the beneficiary errors, if they fail to report something or report something in error, that counts against us also. So we’re focused on how do we educate the beneficiaries on the information that is needed, but also on our staff and team of what to ask for, how do we have those interviews and be consistent. So trying to handle it from multiple fronts.
Representative Mary Bentley Just a quick follow up, chairman. So we had an increase in our pay plan, trying to cut down on our turnover rate. So are we doing better? Are we keeping our staff longer? I know you got a lot on your plate, a lot that they’re doing. So are we seeing a decrease in our turnover rate since we increased the pay plan at all?
Mary Franklin So I would say we have more or less stabilized. We are having lower turnover than we definitely did during the pandemic. And I haven’t seen it increase over the last few months.
SNAP Work Requirements Update
Representative Mary Bentley Okay. One one more follow up, Chairman, if that’s okay. I know you guys have a lot on your plate. Another thing that’s coming up real quickly is our SNAP work requirements. So are we moving forward on that? Can you guys give us a quick update on when that’s going to be implemented, when we have to have that in place for federal?
Mary Franklin So the HR1 bill did make some changes to the able-bodied adult without dependents SNAP work requirement. It increased the age from 54 to 64. And it also added parents of children over age 14 to the group of mandatory individuals who have that work requirement, which means they can only receive SNAP for three months out of a 36-month period if they are not complying with the work requirement or otherwise exempt from the work requirement.
We did not get guidance from FNS until October. And we did an emergency promulgation and fast system changes so that we could implement that in November. So we have implemented that increased work requirement.
We’ve done some training with our staff because the work requirements not new, but the additional recipients of SNAP that it will apply to is new. So we wanted to make sure we brought that to everybody’s attention so they can be aware of that as they interview and make sure that they explain correctly the requirements to our clients and also make sure they code them correctly in the system so that, if they are not meeting the requirement, they don’t receive the benefits for more than the three months out of 36.
So that we have in place and the regular promulgation will be coming through to you through that process. The public comment period, I think it may have started over the weekend. But if not, then it will be very shortly going to public comment and then coming to Rules Committee.
Representative Mary Bentley Thank you. Appreciate it.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Representative Richardson.
TANF Grantee Shutdown Reimbursement
Representative Jay Richardson Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, ladies. I’ve got three questions for you. I’m going to just ramble them out, if you could just get them to me. Regarding TANF, any idea if they’re going to receive October reimbursements for–?
Janet Mann We are very anxious to receive our notice of award from the federal government on TANF and several other grants that were shut down during the shutdown that we’ve not received as of this morning. I went back and double checked this morning. So TANF Notice of Award from October 1. Also with our social services block grant and our community services block grant and our Older Americans Act, we’ve not received those notice of awards or funding as of today.
As soon as we do receive those, which we have received at least notices that they are in process for every state and territory, but we’ve not received that notice or funding. As soon as we do that with the guidance, we will be processing as soon as possible.
Representative Jay Richardson Thank you guys. And do you know if those subgrantees of TANF, when it was shut down, if they’re going to get reimbursed for that time when it was shut down? Because you had some that were operating and working during that time. Do you know if they’ll be getting that or not?
Janet Mann So for October, we let them go in good faith thinking that that would be coming through. We did ask them to pause some activities the very beginning of November because the shutdown had gone longer. So I think it’s really two questions you’re asking me.
I think our intent is to pay them for October in good faith once the notice of award is received, because we did not give them notice or ask them to cease duties for October. There was a certain time period– I believe it was 11 or 12 days– that we asked them to pause some activities that could not be reimbursable, depending on the guidance that we receive from the federal government.
Representative Jay Richardson Okay. I think you’ve answered all of my questions with that response. So thank you guys.
Janet Mann You’re welcome.
Senator Missy Irvin Sorry. Representative Rye?
Representative Johnny Rye Thank you, Madam Chairman. Don’t want to go over anything that we’ve went over so far, but let me ask you this, Mary. A couple of weeks ago, you and I were speaking about the percentages that we pay, like for Medicaid, on down the line. What is that going to change to?
Is there going to be some kind of a change in 2028 that’s going to– if we were paying 80, like if it was 80 for the Fed and 20 for the state that we were paying, is that going to change some? I think you mentioned about $25 million worth of adjustment there.
SNAP Cost Sharing Changes
Mary Franklin So, yes, Representative Rye. In the SNAP program, the administrative expense that the states are required to bear changed with the passage of the federal HR1. And that changed the administrative cost of implementing SNAP from a 50-50 share between the states and the federal government.
And it will change to a 75% share for states and a 25% share for the federal government starting October 1 of 2026 for federal fiscal year 27. And our estimate, I believe, for that has been around 25 million. And then the other change that’s significant in SNAP, as far as potential cost of operating the SNAP program, does lie with the SNAP error rate that we were talking about.
And if it’s above 6 percent beginning October 1, 2027, states will have to pay a range of 5 percent for 6 to, I believe, 9.99 percent error rate. And then it would go to 10 percent for 10 percent and above. And then 15 percent. So if our error rate remains above 6 percent as of October 1, 2027, then the state will have to pay additional cost toward funding the SNAP benefits themselves.
Representative Johnny Rye Follow up, please. Let me ask you this, Mary. That is the only program out there that we’re receiving help from the federal government that’s actually going to change, isn’t that right, under those conditions?
Mary Franklin So those are the only changes that I’m aware of at this moment related to SNAP. Now, I do believe there was a Medicaid FMAP change.
Janet Mann So that was the only change in HR1, sir. Medicaid FMAP percentages change annually on October 1. So that’s always been there. But as far as HR1 that was signed on July 4th, those were the biggest changes for SNAP.
Representative Johnny Rye Thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr Chair.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you, Representative Long.
Ineligible SNAP Recipients
Representative Wayne Long Thank you, Madam Chairman. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. We’ve been hearing some statistics nationally and from some other states on people being removed that are ineligible for benefits. I was wondering if you have any numbers that you could give us on the number of people that’s been removed that were not really eligible for the benefits. And also if you would tell us what you’re doing to identify these people.
Mary Franklin So I was looking at this this morning before I came here. And our enrollment has stayed pretty steady over the last 12 months, between like 243,000 individuals and over a little over 247,000. But every single day we process applications. We make a determination if someone’s eligible, approved, or denied, or we may process changes that have been reported or changes we’ve become aware of and determine if someone is eligible to continue, if their benefits need to remain the same or change or close.
And any cases that they send us through that process that we need to review to see if they remain eligible, we will be doing that. We are getting similar lists from CMS for Medicaid on citizenship. We recently got one on concurrent enrollment, meaning concurrent in more than one state at the same time.
And this is information that states really prior to this have not been privy to except through what’s called the PARIS match, Public Assistance Reporting Information System. And the PARIS match is good in that at least it’s something, but it has limitations, let me just say that, because it’s always looking a quarter behind. So it’s not real time. We have actually implemented something in the SNAP program that FNS required us to. And this is outside of HR1, didn’t have anything to do with that. And this is called the National Accuracy Clearing House.
So FNS was already steering the country in the direction of that shared platform real time, so that if we get applicants in Arkansas that we check the National Accuracy Clearing House to see if they are receiving benefits in another state and vice versa. So I think we were the eighth state to get enrolled in that. So it’ll be much more effective when the whole country’s enrolled, but CMS is also going to go in that direction. I don’t know if they’re going to use the same platform, but I do know that was part of HR1 to get us more and better information to help with accurate eligibility determinations. So I don’t have anything specific. I can just tell you all those things are going on.
Representative Wayne Long Yeah, I’ve also heard maybe a rumor out of DC that there might be a requirement for people to re-enroll. Is that something y’all are hearing?
Mary Franklin So I did see a news article about that. And actually, I don’t know if anything more concrete is going to come. And it may not have been clear in the article, but SNAP, you already have to recertify at periodic intervals. And here in Arkansas, most of our clients are certified for six months. And so they recertify.
There are a group of our clients that we have a waiver for to certify them for 36 months. And those are our elderly and disabled households that don’t have earned income. So they’re certified longer, but we still notify them yearly, let us know if anything has changed. But most of our clients are certified for six months or less.
Representative Wayne Long Thank you, ma’am.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Senator Love.
Senator Fred Love Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to go back to something that you touched on about the 14 year old and the work requirement. So can you just make that a little simpler for me so I can better understand it? So say I’m a parent and I have a 14 year old. Under the new HR1 rules, if I’m coming to recertify, what does that look like now?
Mary Franklin So as the parent of a 14 year old or a child 14 to 18, you would now be subject to the requirement to work in SNAP, which means you have to be employed full-time or 30 hours or more or earning the equivalent of minimum wage for at least 20 hours a week to be compliant. Or there are some other activities you could be involved in.
So as our caseworkers conduct interviews and process applications from households, they’re going to be looking at all of those things, making sure they explain that to the client and try and identify if there are ways that the household is compliant or if there are circumstances that that adult is experiencing that might make them exempt, such as being in substance abuse treatment or going to school, things like that, or disabled.
They’ll be examining those things. And it will not mean that someone doesn’t get approved, but they may only receive benefits for three months out of a 36 month period if they are not complying or exempt from the requirement to work.
Error Rate Causes
Senator Fred Love Okay. All right. And so I’ll leave it at that. Let me ask you this. What are the top two, when you start talking about your error rate, what are the top two errors that usually are reported or that you usually have?
Mary Franklin The top two categories of errors are wages and salaries. Shelter is usually the second, shelter expenses or deductions not being correct. So income is tricky. It can be hard to get right. It’s always a challenge. And it’s usually number one, both errors that the agency makes and errors that the client make in reporting. And then shelter deductions is usually number two.
Senator Fred Love Okay, and then you said also that if the income is reported to DHS wrong then it still counts as an error against DHS as far as the error rate.
Mary Franklin Yes, when the cases are reviewed by quality control, if the cases are determined to be in error, meaning the client didn’t get the right amount of benefits, if it is determined that it’s because the client didn’t tell us they were working or gave us incorrect information about their work, then it still counts as an error in the state’s error rate.
But it can also be because, even if we had the right information, we didn’t key it correctly or calculate it correctly using the system. For example, if it’s weekly wages, but we key it as if it was biweekly or something, causing the right amount of benefits not to be calculated. So it can be either agency caused or client caused.
Senator Fred Love Okay. And then I know, last but not least, I think Representative Long touched on this, but do we have the numbers for the people that will possibly either lose benefits due to the changes of HR1? Do we have those numbers?
I know that you said that we recertify people every six months. But do we have the numbers? Do we have the numbers on people that have lost benefits since that change? Have they recertified or is that going to be a rolling ongoing number?
Mary Franklin That’ll be an ongoing thing based on who applies, who recertifies, or existing clients who get to that three month mark and are not compliant or exempt. So no one has lost coverage yet because of the increase in the age limit and the addition of parents of children age 14 and up because it hasn’t been three months yet since we got it implemented. But it will happen on a monthly basis.
Senator Fred Love Alright, so we probably won’t have like good numbers until after the New Year’s if you’re saying a three month rolling average. So after the new year, we’ll have numbers on if someone or if people did lose. Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Representative Beatty.
Representative Howard Beaty Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m over here. My question’s kind of following in, maybe digging in a little bit deeper than what Senator Love just followed with. That was kind of my line of questioning. Out of the error rates that we have and they’ve been uncovered– I understand the process is, if federal government took all their programs as seriously as they take SNAP in the review process that the states conduct and then that the USDA comes in and follows up to to verify those errors, who knows what we could find out what we have in government what we could save.
So my question is going a little bit deeper into that as far as errors that are errors maybe that enrollees that are being paid benefits supply to DHS versus errors created by DHS in keying or other things. Do you have a breakdown on that of what that percentage is? And is it largely more of folks reporting inaccurate income? Or is it more someone keying things in that are causing these errors?
Mary Franklin I did not bring the specific numbers with me today. But we can get you the specific numbers as they stand right now. But, based on my memory, at this point higher agency errors than client errors.
Representative Howard Beaty That’s a problem.
Mary Franklin I’m thinking around 60-40.
Representative Howard Beaty That’s a huge problem. If that ratio, if it’s more on the agency and someone keying in the information that our folks are supplying, then I think that’s a huge problem that we need to address.
Because in the end, it is going to cost the state money. As well as, and I don’t know what the breakdown is on underpayment and overpayment, because I know we have to make those underpayment whole as well. But it seems like that ought to be an easier fix if we’re getting that information from the enrollees and the folks that benefit and that we can get that into our system.
The second question is, we calculate our error rate and we send those files in. And I think the Fed comes back and they look and do a secondary review later. Are our numbers increasing from our review once the feds look at those numbers? Or are those numbers staying about the same? Are they finding more errors than what we calculated when we did our review?
Mary Franklin So they do review behind us, a certain number of the cases that we review. They select and randomly review to see if they get the same outcome that we did. I can get you specific numbers on that.
I am aware of one case from this current review period that we’re not quite finished with where the feds had a difference than what we had reported. And occasionally that happens. But it doesn’t happen very frequently where they find things behind us. We try very hard to get that review correct.
Representative Howard Beaty Well, that’s good because maybe we’re just being a little more diligent in our reviews than some other states with calculating our error rate. And that could be a good thing compared to some of these states that maybe they’ll get hit a little bit later.
But really if the problem’s on the agency and keying information in, then that should be a top priority on this as it’s going to have an adverse financial impact on the state. So I look forward to looking at that information and seeing, and I’d also like to see kind of the breakdown on the Fed review compared to the state reviews and look at those. But I appreciate y’all being here, and thank you.
Senator Missy Irvin Thank you. Are there any other questions? All right, seeing none, appreciate it. If you don’t mind, I need to talk with you about one of the rules that’s coming up after the meeting. I appreciate that. Any other questions? All right, seeing none, thank you. All right, is there any other business to come before the committee? All right.
Christmas at the Capitol
Just quickly, one thing I want to mention, Christmas in the Capitol is Thursday at 1:30. I know we have Audit at that time. I think the chairs might try to delay those meetings for just a little bit so that we can attend Christmas in the Capitol. Just a reminder, that’s when we as a legislature take care of our children that are in our custody.
We team up with the Department of Children, Family and Services and bring Christmas presents, unwrapped Christmas presents, to the State Capitol this Thursday at 1:30 in the Old Supreme Courtroom. So I want to invite all of you, of course, to hopefully attend that with me and with our Department of Human Services and DCFS and the governor at 1:30 at the Old Supreme Courtroom and bring any unwrapped gifts.
These are for the children that are both in foster care as well as the children that are within our Division of Youth Services at our youth facilities. So if you can remember to put that on your calendar, this Thursday at 1:30. Thank you. Any other business to come before the committee? All right, seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you.
