By Walter Pryce
This is an opinion column. It reflects the views of the writer.
New York State is having a very good year. The state budget office’s Mid-Year Update, posted Oct. 30, projects a $9 billion surplus for this fiscal year and cuts next year’s projected gap from $6.4 billion to $2.9 billion. Most of the money is going into reserves and early debt payments.
The same document contains a sentence every county legislator in Western New York should read twice. A new federal requirement that states pay part of the cost of SNAP food benefits starts as early as Oct. 1, 2027, and the state’s plan says it “does not reflect any costs for a new non-Federal share.” As the Chronicle reported Wednesday, Erie County is already budgeting for a bill Albany has not booked.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature should settle this in the budget due Feb. 1: the state should pay the SNAP benefit share itself, set money aside for it now, and spend to bring down the error rate that sets the size of the bill.
A bill with a known address
The federal budget law President Trump signed last year changed SNAP financing in two ways. The state and local share of running the program rose from 50% to 75% on Oct. 1 of this year. Then, starting in late 2027, states with high payment error rates pay up to 15% of benefit costs. New York’s error rate for federal fiscal 2025 was 13.18%, according to Hunger Solutions New York, which puts the state’s share at about $1.2 billion a year.
In New York, counties run SNAP, and state law decides who pays. County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s 2027 budget message calls the benefit share “the largest single risk” in the county’s four-year plan. “If the State passes the full cost to counties, DSS estimates Erie County’s share at $11.3 million for the final quarter of 2027 and $45-50 million annually thereafter,” it says. The same plan already shows gaps of $65.6 million to $73.8 million a year from 2028 to 2030.
The administrative change alone adds about $4.2 million a year to Erie County, because New York is “one of only three states in the nation where counties pay the full non-federal share of these costs,” the budget message says. Mr. Poloncarz put the consequence plainly to Spectrum News: “I’m not the federal government. I can’t print money. So I have to basically reduce expenses elsewhere to make up for the additional amount that we have to pay.”
A county has two ways to cover $50 million: cut services or raise the property tax. Neither is a fair place to send a bill created by a state-level error rate.
The strongest objection
Albany’s caution is not foolish. The surplus comes largely from Wall Street, and the budget office warns that a recession could cut receipts by $35 billion to $50 billion over three years. Ms. Hochul has said she will not build spending on a windfall. State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, in his mid-year receipts report, said higher collections “are partially a result of financial market growth” and added, “However, consumer costs keep rising and many families are still struggling.”
A SNAP share is a recurring cost, and paying recurring costs with one-time money is how budgets get into trouble. That is the best argument for leaving it with the counties.
It doesn’t hold up. The cost does not go away if Albany passes it down; it moves to property tax bills, which hit the same struggling families Mr. DiNapoli described. And the state, not the counties, has the income tax base, the reserves and most of the tools to cut errors. The Mid-Year Update already carries a $3 billion transaction risk reserve in each future year for exactly this kind of exposure. A known $1.2 billion cost belongs in the plan, not in a footnote.
Washington has a point on errors
The federal government’s case deserves a fair hearing. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the latest error rates in June, it put the national rate at 10.62%, against a 6% threshold, with $10.1 billion in improper payments, counting both overpayments and underpayments. “These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins said.
On New York, she is largely right. A 13.18% error rate means the state is getting eligibility and benefit amounts wrong too often, and tying federal money to accuracy is a reasonable way to push states to fix that. New York did cut its rate from 14.09% the year before. It needs to keep going, because the lower the rate, the smaller the bill.
What should happen now
Gov. Hochul should put the SNAP benefit share in her fiscal 2028 executive budget as a state cost, with a written commitment to hold counties harmless, and move a portion of this year’s surplus into a dedicated reserve for it.
The state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance should publish a corrective plan with targets for New York’s error rate, and the budget should pay for the county caseworkers and systems needed to meet them.
Western New York’s state legislators should make county protection a condition of their budget votes. Stephen Acquario of the New York State Association of Counties told Spectrum News that “the magnitude of this cost shift is beyond the capacity of local taxpayers and that we need their help.” He is right, and the region’s delegation should say so in public.
The Erie County Legislature should pass a resolution before the state budget is released asking Albany to carry the share, so no one can later say the counties were silent.
What you can do
Call your state senator and Assembly member this month and ask one question: will you vote for a budget that passes the SNAP benefit share to Erie County property taxpayers? Ask for the answer in writing before the governor’s Feb. 1 budget, while there is still a $9 billion cushion to pay for the right answer.
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