The clock is ticking for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s plan to decrease SNAP payment errors in Pennsylvania to start working.

The commonwealth’s 2025 SNAP error rate was 9.21% in 2025, with 8.03% of errors coming as overpayments and 1.18% being underpayment errors, according to recently released federal data. The error rate refers to the percentage of SNAP benefits paid either above or below what people should have received, primarily because of mistakes. While low-error states are guaranteed to owe nothing when the annual cost-sharing requirement begins in October 2027, others will have another year to try to reduce their errors and decrease the hit to their budgets. Pennsylvania is among the states that will have to pay into the system next year unless their error rates decrease to less than 6%.

Pennsylvania officials announced in December a plan to use new computer tools as a solution to decreasing the state’s high SNAP error rate. Driven in part by new federal requirements to lower the state’s SNAP error rate, the new tools will also allow state residents to track their benefits applications in real-time and save millions in taxpayer dollars and thousands of hours in staff overtime. State Human Services Department and CODE PA officials have piloted the new tools late in 2025, cutting down on the number of illegible documents submitted by 80%, saving 700 hours of staff time. Likewise, the new SNAP case checker helped staff prioritize more than 1,000 cases for additional review, helping reduce the risk of additional SNAP case errors.

We’ll give Shapiro a bit of credit. At least his administration has announced a plan to deal with the issue. That hasn’t been the case for other states whose leadership has been critical of the federal government’s new rule but has done nothing concrete to deal with the issue.

State residents should hope those steps cut Pennsylvania’s SNAP error rate by 3% – or else we will all be paying for the state’s mistakes. State lawmakers already can’t pass a budget. Finding more money to pay into the SNAP program may add months onto the state’s already unwieldy budget deliberations each year.