A produce cooler at Willy Street Co-op in Madison, Wisconsin. The Evers administration and a large group of advocates are calling on the Legislature to put $69 million more into the Wisconsin FoodShare program to cover new administrative expenses. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Advocates are urging state lawmakers to help Wisconsin absorb new administrative costs as a result of federal changes to the nation’s primary food assistance program.

Changes made to Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program (SNAP) benefits in the mega bill signed by President Donald Trump last year will add $69.2 million to the cost of Wisconsin’s FoodShare program in the current two-year budget, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The agency administers the FoodShare program.

The federal mega bill, which Trump signed on July 4, cut taxes along with spending on some federal programs, including SNAP.

A letter from 165 participating groups asks legislators “to take immediate action to provide funding for these changes. Additional delays in providing this funding will put Wisconsin taxpayers at risk of paying for increased costs and will negatively impact communities, businesses, and SNAP recipients across Wisconsin.”

The coalition of social service, food industry and advocacy organizations held a press conference Wednesday to call for the added state support.

“At an average of $6 per person per day, SNAP supports nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, and also supports local economies with each dollar in SNAP benefits, generating between $1.50 and $1.80 in economic activity,” said Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin.

The press conference coincided with a lobbying day for the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, one of the coalition members

“FoodShare brings more than a billion dollars of spending power into our state every year, and a large share of that is returned to Wisconsin producers, and in particular, dairy producers, that flows not only through grocery stores, but back through cheese plants and into dairy farms like the one my family owns,” said Andy Hatch, the owner of Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville and the cheesemakers’ association’s policy chair.

“This is a bipartisan issue” — one that the association’s members, Republicans and Democrats alike, “have all agreed on,” Hatch added. “Our core mission is to feed people and to support our communities, rural and urban, and is why we’ve come together with people across the state to ask our lawmakers to fund the requested $69 million and make sure that there is not a disruption to FoodShare.”

The request includes funding to add administrative staff to avoid errors in the state’s operation of the program. Among the changes to SNAP is a penalty that would require states to pick up some of the benefit costs if their errors exceed 6%. State officials have said that could cost Wisconsin up to $205 million.

The $69 million that the state has estimated it will require to implement those changes was not included in the 2025-27 state budget. Gov. Tony Evers’s office said he had told lawmakers about the need last August, and Evers highlighted the coalition’s call in a statement Thursday.

“Because of President Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ Wisconsin taxpayers will already be on the hook for over a quarter of a billion dollars in new costs in future budgets,” Evers said.

“And if we don’t get the resources we’ve been asking for in order to keep our FoodShare error rate low, Wisconsinites could have to pay hundreds of millions even more in penalty fees each year,” he added. “That just cannot happen—it will cripple future state budgets. This funding is critical, and the Legislature must get this done.” 

The request includes $16.1 million to add staff in order to ensure that FoodShare is administered accurately. The new federal law requires states with SNAP error rates exceeding 6% to cover from 5% to 15% of the benefit costs starting in October 2027.

Wisconsin’s error rate in 2024 was 4.47%, the state health department said in a news release in August. The error rate flags instances when recipients get too much or too little SNAP aid or the state makes other mistakes in the program.

“However, rates naturally fluctuate, and even more so when the federal government changes program policies and standards with virtually no notice and is inconsistent with its definition of an error,” the health department release stated.

If the error rate rises and requires Wisconsin to start paying some of the benefit costs, that could cost the state up to $205 million a year, according to the Wisconsin DHS.

To hold down the state’s “historically low error rate while implementing the other provisions” in the federal law and to maintain quality control in administering FoodShare, the state and Wisconsin counties combined will need to add 56 employees, according to the health department.

The new federal law also increases the state’s share of administrative costs for SNAP from 50% to 75%, starting Oct. 1, 2026. That will cost the state an additional $32.4 million.

In addition, the law expanded work requirements for people who receive SNAP, which the Wisconsin DHS estimates would affect about 43,700 Wisconsin FoodShare recipients.

The new requirements affect anyone ages 18 to 64 without a child under 14 at home, including parents with children ages 14 to 17, who were previously exempt from work requirements. Previously work requirements applied to adults age 54 or younger without any children under 18 at home.

The state has estimated it would need an additional $20.7 million to increase participation in the FoodShare employment and training program for recipients who have work requirements and aren’t working already.

Reno Wright, public policy and advocacy director at the Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee, said more than 40% of FoodShare recipients are children, with about one in four Wisconsin children living in a household that uses FoodShare sometime during the year.

“Research shows that SNAP reduces child poverty by nearly 30% and is linked to long-term health and educational outcomes, but those outcomes depend on a system that functions efficiently,” Wright said. The funding sought for the program “ensures that the department has the staffing and the infrastructure needed to prevent delays and disruptions as new federal requirements take effect.”

There is not a stand-alone bill in the Legislature currently for the additional funding, but advocates hope an amendment could be added to another piece of  legislation that would fund SNAP.