SNAP Benefits Delays Force Government to Take Action

Authorities responsible for processing SNAP applications in Colorado have been placed on a corrective action plan by the federal government due to widespread delays, with some of America’s most vulnerable being left without benefits access.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments are funded by the federal government, but distributed nationwide by state and county authorities. The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 stipulates that all eligible households receive SNAP benefits within 30 days of application or within seven days for those who are eligible for an expedited service.

But in Colorado, benefit recipients are having to wait much longer than expected due to slow processing times in several counties that are reportedly among the worst in the U.S. The problem has become so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs the program at the federal level, has been forced to take action.

“Colorado is severely out of compliance with federal requirements,” the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service told the state on October 3, according to The Colorado Sun. “This has resulted in a hardship to needy households across Colorado who are not consistently receiving access to SNAP benefits within 7 or 30 days.”

The state now has to submit regular reports to the government outlining how the services are improving. Newsweek contacted the USDA and the Colorado Department of Human Services for comment via email outside of normal working hours on February 6.

Data obtained by The Colorado Sun found that some counties are only processing just over a quarter of SNAP renewals within the federally mandated time frame. Pueblo County only renewed 26 percent of applications within the 30-day period from December 2022 through October. Similar figures have been reported for El Paso County. In Jefferson County, only 50 percent of applications are given a decision within the same period.

Across the board, 74 percent of SNAP applications in Colorado are processed on time, according to USDA data from 2022. Variations are wide across the state’s counties because applications are handled on a county level. While the funds for SNAP come from the federal government, responsibility for dishing it out is down to officials in the 64 counties within Colorado.

Colorado isn’t the only state struggling to administer benefits on time. Claimants in Tennessee have been waiting months for their applications to be approved as the introduction of a new processing system had led to huge backlogs of applications.

“Across the country, we’ve seen an uptick in people encountering significant delays,” Kelly Horton, chief program officer at the Food Research and Action Center, told Marketplace in November 2023. “For many of those applicants, the wait for application approval process feels like being stuck in a never ending traffic jam.”