Champaign County anticipates an $81,000 deficit in funding to administer SNAP food assistance.
This comes after new federal rules from the Big Beautiful Bill have shifted how funding is handled for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.
Those rules went into effect Oct. 1, pushing individual counties to pay 75% of administrative costs for SNAP. Previously counties split the cost of staff and other expenses to run the program with the federal government.
"50% of those costs were covered by federal government and then 50% was handled locally," said Stacy Cox, the director of Job and Family Services for Champaign County. "Effective Oct. 1, the federal cost share is dropping ... so that original 50 percent, what we call match, has dropped down to 25 percent."
Nearly 4,000 people used SNAP benefits in April, 2026. That's about 10 percent of the county's population.
Residents used the federal program in higher numbers during the pandemic due to federal emergency allotments, which have ended. But participation numbers remain higher than pre-pandemic stats, Cox said, even after those emergency funds were canceled.
"From 2019 to 2025, there would be an increase in the number of households accessing SNAP benefits to the tune of about 6.5% and then an increase in the monthly issuance of about 54%," she said.
Champaign County was allocated $88,690 through Ohio House Bill 730 for SNAP administration, but it still anticipates being short on money to maintain staffing for administration.
Cox said this added expense comes on top of financial cuts dating back to the Great Recession in 2009. All together, the department has left positions empty and let go of a staff member to make up for this deficit.
“Despite inflation and growing costs, we never recovered from that, and then now we're having this additional cut specifically related to SNAP administration," she said.
As of right now, Champaign County JFS has seven generic eligibility referral specialists handling SNAP, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families applications. It also employs three specialized eligibility referral specialists for Medicaid, benefit recovery and some specialized, long-term care cases.
"Long-time care is like nursing home Medicaid or community-based services," Cox said.
Much is still unknown about the future of SNAP administration, but Cox said she hopes they can find other ways to bridge the gap in funding without losing more staff.
The new federal rules also call for states with an error rate of 6% or more to pay an even larger percentage of the costs.
While Ohio has improved its error rate from 6.7% in the federal fiscal 2025 year to 5.54% by October of 2026, Cox said the federal government is expected to look at the 2025 numbers.
"Although it was over the threshold, I would say Ohio was doing very well because the national average at that time was 10.62%," she said.
Cox said if Ohio does need to pay for the higher rate, the combined financial strain would have a “debilitating effect” on Champaign County’s administration of the program.
“When you don't have the staff to administer the program, you're prone to more errors," she said. "You're prone to delays in folks being able to become eligible in a timely fashion, which it just ends up being a domino effect.”
Cox said the nearly 4,000 people that use SNAP food assistance in their county still have multiple local resources to help them through this time of uncertainty.
Those include community resources like Caring Kitchen and Second Harvest Food Bank.
"There's an organization called The Warehouse we would refer them to. Churches, community organizations and then we like to refer people to our OSU extension programs," she said. "They provide education on things such as food preservation and safety, budget-friendly meal planning, things of that sort."
