BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey is deflecting blame for a whopping $364 million in SNAP payment errors in Fiscal Year 2024, while also explaining a letter from the Biden administration’s USDA urging her to clean up the food stamp program in Massachusetts and get its numbers back to “acceptable” levels.

“The Biden administration sent notices out to states about what was happening with the DTA programs, and we received one. I knew that during COVID, payment errors went up across the country, across all states when it came to this,” Healey said regarding the letter from the Biden admin. “We took immediate action, and that meant hiring more caseworkers, taking more steps to verify eligibility, and more emphasis and resources towards training and program integrity.”

A letter from the USDA, dated Feb. 8, 2024, urged Healey to improve and bring to “acceptable” levels the DTA’s payment error rate, case and procedural error rate, and its application processing timeliness, adding that all three didn’t meet “basic federal requirements” in FY22 under the Baker admin.

“I urge you to prioritize these concerns and take appropriate steps to make sure that your State has an acceptable application processing timeliness (APT) rate, payment error rate (PER), and case and procedural error rate (CAPER) and meets basic Federal requirements,” the letter from Biden’s USDA said.

Healey slightly improved the state’s SNAP payment error rate in FY23 during her first year as governor, bringing it from 11.7% in FY22 to 9.86% in FY23. But in FY24, after the federal state of emergency for the pandemic had ended, the payment error rate skyrocketed to 14.1% – among the worst states in the country.

Massachusetts received over $2.6 billion, or more than $240 million per month, in federal SNAP funding that year, equating to $364 million in erred payments, of which, $338 million was in overpayments. Only six states had higher payment error rates than Massachusetts that year. Complete data from FY25 is not yet available.

Pressed by the Herald on the FY24 numbers, Healey again pointed the finger at changes made during the Biden administration during the pandemic, and claimed that the state’s payment error rate “is going down.”

“I think there’s just some hangover from COVID, and that’s why you continue to see payment error rates around the country. The important thing to me is that that is going down in Massachusetts, and we’re going to continue to do everything that we need to do,” Healey said.

“As somebody who prosecuted fraud and abuse as a career prior to this, we take very seriously, and I do, program integrity. We want to make sure that we’re getting the very best out of every single federal taxpayer dollar in this instance. So DTA has more resources, there have been changes there, and we’re gonna see payment rates go down, I think all across the country, because other states are doing this as well. Again, a lot of this had to do with COVID and getting through that time,” she said.

The DTA told the Herald that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government directed states to prioritize rapid access to benefits and implement broad waivers that reduced verification processes, with an agency spokesperson adding “that approach was intentional and appropriate, it prevented hunger and stabilized families during an emergency.”

“Nationwide, payment error rates increased during the COVID-19 pandemic because of federal policy changes,” DTA spokesperson Cecille Avila told the Herald. “The Department of Transitional Assistance has been taking significant action to lower the payment error rate, including increasing caseworkers to verify eligibility, implementing stricter reporting requirements for clients, and strengthening staff training.”

Healey claimed last week that allegations of fraud in Massachusetts, labeled by President Trump during the State of the Union address as among the most fraud-ridden states, are simply a “distraction” by Trump to shift focus away from what she says are his failed policies.

Healey refuses to hand over SNAP recipient information, including immigration status, to the Trump administration and the USDA in order to root out waste, fraud and abuse. The governor’s office says the Trump administration has not provided assurances the information will not be given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But an agency insider said Massachusetts should share the data with the feds in order to reduce fraud.

“I might have thought differently a few years ago, but at this point, there’s so much fraud and messiness and innocent people being victimized by this theft that the state needs to turn over the information,” a DTA whistleblower, who has detailed “rampant” fraud within the state’s SNAP program, told the Herald. “When you’ve got this kind of volume and get directives from higher-ups to just keep surging ahead and to not ask too many invasive questions, it becomes overwhelming for a single DTA employee to try to counter,” the mid-level DTA staffer said.

The revelation of the Biden-era letter to Healey follows several public benefits fraud schemes totaling tens of millions of dollars uncovered by state and federal authorities in Massachusetts along with a recent whistleblower report of “rampant” fraud within the DTA.

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