Wednesday, October 14, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on September 23, 2026
After the federal government reconfigured how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are administered and the state passed the costs on to the counties, they face new SNAP-related costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. The SNAP program provides food benefits to low-income families.
When Congress passed the latest federal budget, it changed the administrative cost of the SNAP program from a 50/50 shared agreement between the federal government and the states to a 75/25 split, with the states paying the larger share. The North Carolina General Assembly passed on that additional cost to its counties in the budget bill that was approved in July.
The US government and the NC counties are on different fiscal calendars and because of that, the full costs of the changes have not yet been felt. According to Dare County Director of Social Services Chuck Lycett, the county’s share of the new administrative cost “is going to be $237,000, and that’s already been worked into the budget for this year.”
The full cost, for 2027 and 2028 “when you combine those together, it comes out to a total of $595,388. We already covered $237,000, so the county will need to come up with $358,388 for Fiscal Year 2028,” he added.
Lycett stated that Dare County currently has 1,895 SNAP recipients, notably less than the 2,365 recipients who were receiving benefits as of April 2025, according to state records. The federal legislation made changes to SNAP eligibility requirements, but it is not clear how much of the drop in Dare County recipients is a result of those changes.
Currituck County, based on information on the North Carolina Health News website, will need to fund an additional $357,000 in administrative costs over the next two years. Hyde County, with a smaller population but proportionally more SNAP recipients, is projected to need an additional $242,000.
Former NC District 1 Senator Bobby Hanig did not vote for the budget bill that shifted the cost of SNAP administration to the counties. And he calls that shifting the “Raleigh Shuffle.”
“The counties that use it the most are the ones that can’t afford to pay the extra money,” he added. “It makes no sense. The state can afford to pay the difference. It’s just another burden on the county government, which causes local taxes to go up.”
In moving more of the costs of the SNAP program to the states, the federal government added other provisions that translate into additional costs for counties and municipalities.
Traditionally, the federal government has taken on the entire cost of SNAP benefits—the money people use to purchase groceries under the program. “We never had to worry about it. It was 100% by the federal government since 1964” when the program began, Lycett said.
That has changed, however, with the state’s portion ranging from 5 to 15 percent of the cost to provide SNAP benefits.
To cover those costs, “it’s going to impact all the localities because it’s out of the tax dollars, the first two cents of the sales tax,” Lycett said. “The state withholds that from each of the municipalities. So, each of the municipalities are also going to realize a reduction in sales tax coming back to them.”
The range of the benefit costs is based on the error rate of administering SNAP benefits. Because benefit eligibility is administered by the counties, each one is responsible for any errors that may occur. North Carolina’s SNAP benefit error rate is 7.36%, significantly less than the national average of 10.62%. The target figure from the federal government, however, is 6%.
To track those errors, the state “randomly selects about 1,200 SNAP applications each year for the payment error rate,” Lycett said. Larger counties like Wake or Mecklenburg are more likely to be audited, but any county could find itself being audited.
At a meeting with other North Carolina social services directors, Lycett said that “somebody likened it to Russia roulette. You just don’t know.” Dare County had two SNAP applications pulled and there was an error on one of them.
“When you do the math, our error rate is at 50%,” Lycett said. “It will cost Dare County, although how much is still unclear.”
To avoid mistakes in the future, there may be an additional administrative cost. “We are looking to hire a part-time additional…quality control person,” Lycett noted.
Comments
Dr. Johnny
Surprise! So counties will now have to fund THEIR admin costs and not rely on the state or feds to bail them out. It’s the counties admin costs so THEY need to learn to live leaner. Most certainly the counties cut programs and not admin.
Bob
More money for Tacos illegal wars.
thomas
Starve the poor, throw them all off of Medicare, and gut social security so the old are living in the gutter and can’t even afford an aspirin. Then turn around and give Musk and his “techbro’s” a billion dollar tax break so they can build a toxic data center in our back yard with the stated goal of turning loose an AI agent that will take all our jobs. Thank you “One Big Beautiful Bill” and bless you Dear Leader.
Fraud Food Fight
While the the food stamp program like all government programs has a history of some level of fraud and abuse, the program has historically had strong bipartisan support. The vast majority of Americans have always agreed that even if the program is not perfect we do not want any truly needy citizens to go hungry.
In recent years the US GAO has documented that the SNAP program has had large numbers of ineligible recipients and huge amounts of obvious fraud across the country, some states worse than others. The federal government is pushing more of the costs of the program onto the states to hold them accountable and give them more of an incentive to address fraud. Many state in turn are pushing more of these costs onto the local governments for the same reasons. Unfortunately these changes will mean that some states that have historically been more responsible will be impacted due to the gross abuse and obvious fraud in other irresponsible states like MN, CA, IL, NY, etc.
Fog
A 50% error rate? In any world, except the one inhabited by fraudsters, morons and commenters, that would be unacceptable.
An example: “GOOD NEWS! 51% of the commercial aircraft flights didn’t crash today.” “Secretary Pete was unavailable to comment and the President says he is working on it.” My word as a Biden.”
Sammy the Shark
Disgusting
Hanig, of course blames others just like Trump.
These guys are only protecting the rich and powerful.
When interest rates hit 10% and gas is 9$ a gallon there will be even more people who need SNAP.
Whats hilarious is all of these clowns will proclaim their love of Jesus as the rip people off and watch them starve
Profree
Is this the result of the Big Beautiful Bill? It’s on the backs of the poor, once again.
G.Lee
Thanks to the “Big Beautiful Bill” more poor Americans will go hungry. Hope localities are stocking up their food banks. Is this a great country or what. Recently read a story about a woman on disability (which already pays very little). She lost her SNAP benefit with no explanation provided. She described her typical diet. Let’s just say it was at starvation level and definitely not providing adequate nutrition. With the higher cost of everything I don’t know how families are managing to put food on the table, and now with SNAP benefits being cut and/or the cost being passed on to the localities, it’s a disaster for those already struggling to get by.
Dom Bostich
The county has probably already spent that screwing around with the Wanchese cluster home and Bowsertown debacles. But the predictable voices on this thread whine about $300k a year that the county has to–and always should have–provide. You know…starving kids and all that.
charlie
How to lower state level expenses–republicans in the Assembly just send them to the counties and say good luck….They sure as heck are not working for the people…
Travis
“When you do the math, our error rate is at 50%,” Lycett said. “It will cost Dare County, although how much is still unclear.”
I’m sorry, but Mr. Lycett is unqualified for his position if this is how he defends the service of Dare Social Services and this is how he does math.
Of the hundreds of SNAP recipients in Dare, two were randomly selected and one application was found with errors. That’s not a 50% error rate based on the entire group of SNAP beneficiaries. It isn’t even a reliable statistical sampling.
Also an “error” is not necessarily fraud. An error can be putting your first name in the last name section of the form. More context is needed before jumping to the conclusion that this is fraud. Even if it was, a deeper look at all the SNAP applications in Dare County would be needed to conclude that fraud was a problem.
All Lycett’s comment does is give fuel to individuals like Fog with deep issues of confirmation bias to support their preconceived idea that all government assistance is bad.
disgruntled
Travis,
We should all be asking these questions about every number we hear. Allowing for outliers I’m going say all the statistics, polls, and percentages that we hear are found in similar ways. Small sample, large assumptions, mathematical/statistical models until you get the narrative you’re looking for.
A percentage without the numbers means nothing, in this case the numbers show the percentage is BS.
Dom Bostich
Travis seems to have his own bias. Please look in Fog’s comments and cite where he said “all government assistance is bad.”
Sandflea
So. MUCH. WINNING!!
Unfortunately, many of the people receiving these benefits voted against their own best interests…. They got what they voted for. But the good news is; is that we’re going to get a $600,000,000 ballroom and a $150,000,000 arch loaded with weapons and ammunition (He just told our enemies where to strike). BRILLIANT!
Geoff
Government assistance is supposed to be helping hand through hard times, not a lifetime. We are paying for people who need to find a job.
half of one is 2
So Travis, the math is really simple. The state asked for 2 files. One was correct, and one had an error. The state views this as a 50% error rate on our files. If they had pulled 4 files and three were correct, and one was wrong, the error rate would be 25%.
Now obviously there are hundreds of files to look at and if you dug through all of them and found the actual number wrong to get the actual error rate, I’m sure just as you are that the error rate would be substantially lower.
However the state doesn’t do thing this way. They take small samples and base your rate on the finding from those. So he is not wrong in his math. Just thought you should know.
Wayne
Wayne
Stop giving it to people who are not citizens of the United States.\n And you will have plenty of money to feed the Americans.