New SNAP Requirements Could Stress County Budgets

Using a blue pen, Bladen County Board of Commissioners chair Cameron McGill signed 18 letters to state lawmakers in late January.

One was for N.C. Speaker of the House Destin Hall. Another for the state Senate’s Republican leader, Phil Berger. Others were addressed to senior chairs of the committees that deal with appropriations and health care.

McGill’s signature varied in size and how straight it ran across the bottom of the letter as he repeatedly fired off his requests that the state cover administrative costs related to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called SNAP or food stamps, or Food and Nutrition Services in North Carolina.

Bladen–one of the poorest and most economically distressed counties in North Carolina—faces more than $397,000 in new administrative costs to operate the program when a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act goes into effect in October. The added costs come as the county cut its budget by 14% this fiscal year and still had to pull $1.1 million from its capital reserves to balance it.

“This could be a big burden for us,” Charles Ray Peterson, a member of the Bladen County Board of Commissioners, said at a January 20 meeting. 

North Carolina’s other 99 counties also will feel the crunch. Together, they are expected to pay an additional $69 million to participate in the food assistance program, health officials told the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services in January. The actual increase could be even higher, according to Geoffrey Marett, director of the Craven County Department of Social Services and co-chair of the advocacy committee for the N.C. Association of County Directors of Social Services.

Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, could see the biggest price hike, over $8.1 million. But Karen Powell, executive director of the state association, worries more about smaller and rural counties that can’t afford their share.

“They have a disproportionate hardship because their tax base is limited,” Powell said. “They don’t have anywhere else to go get the money, whereas bigger counties can shift around a little bit easier.”

The federal government pays for the bulk of SNAP, including the cost of benefits. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, reduces the federal share of the program’s administrative costs from 50% to 25%, shifting more of the burden to states. 

The state is expected to pay an additional $16 million per year and pass the remaining costs onto counties, according to health officials. North Carolina is one of only 10 states where counties are responsible for administering SNAP, according to the National Association of Counties.

“If it funnels down to counties that can’t handle it, then the [department of social services] directors have to start figuring out, ‘How am I going to make up that funding?’” Powell said. “What happens, typically, is they start looking to see where they can cut.”

Those cuts, she said, often start in department payrolls, removing positions that could help handle the expanded work requirements also passed under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

State lawmakers are still examining the potential impact on counties, said Lauren Horsch, a spokesperson for Berger. Eight months into the current fiscal year, North Carolina still doesn’t have a budget.

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, proposed a “critical needs budget” on March 9 that includes funding for health care, but none for SNAP.

“If the North Carolina General Assembly is unable to allocate the funding necessary, [the state] will have to stop offering the SNAP program altogether,” James Werner, a spokesperson for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, told The Assembly and the Border Belt Independent. 

Meanwhile, Bladen and other counties are already planning their budgets for the next fiscal year. 

“They can’t rely on ‘Let’s hope and see,’” Powell said. “They’ve got to go with, ‘We’re not going to have it.’”

Stricter Work Requirements 

Expanded work requirements for SNAP recipients that went into effect in December could also mean more local costs.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, more people must work at least 80 hours a month to qualify for SNAP benefits. The legislation says able-bodied adults 65 and younger with dependents must meet the work requirements. Previously, the rule applied to those 55 and younger. Adults with a child 14 or younger (instead of 18 or younger) also have to work, as do people who are homeless. 

The legislation also requires SNAP recipients to get reapproved every six months instead of 12, which means more upkeep for caseworkers in social services departments that are already understaffed.   

Many counties likely can’t afford to hire more caseworkers. Without funding from the General Assembly, “counties will struggle to maintain timely, accurate, and accountable delivery of nutrition assistance to North Carolinians,” the N.C. Association of County Directors of Social Services wrote in a brief to the state health and human services committee last month. 

“Who’s going to suffer there?” Powell said. “The families that need it most.”

Bladen County’s letters to state lawmakers highlight concerns about “higher caseloads, higher error rates, financial penalties, or unmet needs.”

More than 6,200 people in Bladen County received SNAP benefits in February, 21% of the county’s population, according to state data. Jill Sampson, director of social services for the county, said she is monitoring caseloads to determine if more workers are needed. 

Neighboring Columbus County is already feeling the burden. The county’s Department of Social Services was struggling to “timely” recertify SNAP benefits amid an increase in cases, director Dwella Hall reported to the Columbus Board of Commissioners at its February 16 meeting. 

Columbus County is expected to pay more than $416,000 in new SNAP administrative costs, bringing its total to about $1.25 million.

Faced with a budget shortfall, Columbus County commissioners cut spending by 12% and eliminated 24 staff positions this fiscal year. They used about $1.5 million in reserve funds to balance the budget. 

If a significant number of counties struggle to maintain timely benefit delivery, North Carolina’s error rate could worsen, Craven County’s Marett said, forcing it to keep paying for a portion of the benefits delivered. Error rates measure counties’ and states’ accuracy in delivering the correct dollar amount of benefits.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandates that any state with an error rate over 6% pay for a share of its benefits. Using North Carolina’s 10.21% error rate from the federal fiscal year 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, would require the state to pay for 15% of its more than $2.8 billion in distributed benefits, state health officials said. As of August 2025, health officials reported that the state’s error rate is 7.05%, which would require it to pay for 5% of the total.

“It takes people to do the job,” Marett said. “When the job keeps expanding, you’re going to need more resources to get it done, and that always tends to be the part that’s not put into the equation when you have some major policy shifts.”

‘Unfunded Mandates’  

Cumberland County is expected to see the state’s fourth-highest increase in administrative SNAP costs, almost $3 million. Kirk deViere, chair of the county’s Board of Commissioners, said officials must rethink spending plans.

“There’s a series of–I hate using the word–but unfunded mandates that are going to get pushed down from the feds through the state down to us,” he said during a February 3 board meeting. “As we go into our budget cycle, we’re going to have to clearly understand those because we’re going to have to plan for the worst-case scenario.”

Samuel Croom, the Bladen County manager, said county officials are starting to plan how to cover extra costs if the state doesn’t step in. Some projects, including infrastructure upgrades, might have to be delayed, he said. 

“We just have to be good stewards of what’s there,” Croom said.

Marett said he has spent months working on how to fit Craven County’s expected $672,000 increase into the social services budget.  

“We try to adjust our sails to the wind as quickly as possible to keep going in the direction we feel we need to go in for our clients,” he said.

Meanwhile, the N.C. House is considering a proposal to limit local property taxes, which are a huge revenue generator for counties. 

In February, the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reduction and Reform heard a presentation from the Tax Foundation about setting an annual cap on growth in total property tax revenue on existing properties. The foundation is a conservative-leaning nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Berger, who could lose his state Senate seat after trailing challenger Sam Page by 23 votes in a Republican primary this month, also announced plans to propose a 12-month freeze on property revaluation changes. Berger said he wants the state to adopt property tax reforms.

“North Carolinians are shouldering the burden of massive increases in local budgets,” Berger said in a news release. “It doesn’t matter to our citizens if a tax is paid to the state or a local government; it’s their money coming out of their pockets.”

Rural counties already have some of the highest property tax rates in the state, according to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. Scotland County has the highest rate at $0.99 per $100 of a property’s valuation. Bertie and Hyde counties rank second and third at $0.93 and $0.92 per $100 of a property’s valuation, respectively.

Croom said Bladen County is used to working with scarce resources, but cuts might be necessary.

“If the end result is to give tax relief to citizens,” Croom said, “then naturally we would have to look at the services we provide.”