The recently passed Ohio House version of the 2026-2027 biennium budget includes several harmful provisions that would weaken the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and increase costs for taxpayers. Ohio families could be hurt by these changes, including survivors of domestic violence, rural Ohioans with limited job opportunities, and working families. These provisions would also needlessly create more bureaucracy and inefficiency for County Job and Family Services (CJFS) offices throughout Ohio that are already stretched too thin.
The Ohio Senate should reject these harmful provisions and instead focus on improving the efficiency at CJFS offices to ensure prompt and accurate processing of food, medical, and childcare benefits. These critically important work supports help low-income Ohioans succeed in the workforce and ensure children, older adults, and individuals with disabilities—who make up the vast majority of SNAP recipients in Ohio—can meet their basic needs.
What would change in Ohio under proposed SNAP provisions?
Cumbersome income reporting guidelines
Requires working Ohioans to report minor changes in income every month, even though they are still eligible for SNAP benefits. See Sec.5101.546.
SNAP households must already report income changes anytime their income exceeds the eligibility limit, so this policy change would only affect working Ohioans who earn an additional $100+ in a month, perhaps because they picked up an extra shift or worked overtime.
Requiring Ohio to switch from “simplified reporting” to “change reporting,” would significantly increase county workloads.
Requiring Ohio to switch from “simplified reporting” to “change reporting,” would significantly increase county workloads - and therefore costs - to administer SNAP. Change reporting is a very inefficient way to operate SNAP; so much so that Mississippi is the only state to require it for all households. Furthermore, this flawed policy was considered by the Ohio legislature in 2021 (SB 17) and rejected.
Limits the Governor’s authority
Takes away the Governor’s authority to suspend SNAP’s 3-month time limit in communities experiencing high unemployment. See Sec.5101.548.
When Congress created SNAP’s harsh rule in 1996 that limits so-called “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents” (ABAWDs) to just 3 months of SNAP benefits in a 36-month period, there was broad bipartisan agreement that the rule should not apply during times of economic hardship when an insufficient number of jobs were available in local communities. This provision would bar Ohio from ever waiving this rule, even in the event of an economic recession, national emergency, or natural disaster.
Although Ohio is not currently exercising the federal option to waive the 3-month time limit in any counties, Governors of both political parties have used this authority in the past to support rural Ohioans, especially in Appalachian counties, where work and training opportunities are extremely limited even in good times. Ohio has also used this authority in response to economic events in specific counties.
For example, when General Motors closed the Lordstown plant in 2019, more than 7,700 Ohioans in Trumbull and Mahoning Counties lost their jobs. Without the authority to suspend the 3-month time limit (as Governor DeWine did for these two counties), laid off workers would have lost the modest SNAP benefits they qualified to receive (worth just $2 per person per day at the time) after 90 days unless they were able to quickly find a new job working 20+ hours per week.
It would be short-sighted for the Ohio legislature, on the eve of a potential economic recession, to remove this important policy option for states to respond to economic downturns—especially considering that the current administration is not abusing this authority. Furthermore, no Governor should cede this administrative authority, explicitly granted by Congress, to ensure all Ohioans in need can access SNAP in times of economic crisis.
Creates barriers to identify vulnerable groups
Takes away Ohio’s ability to identify vulnerable groups of Ohioans, beyond those required by federal law, who need SNAP for more than 3 months out of every 3 years. See Sec.5101.548.
Even though Ohio rarely uses its authority to grant “discretionary exemptions,” it is an important flexibility for the state to retain. For example, in 2023, federal SNAP law changed dramatically, and states only had a few months to implement the new rules, including to make significant computer system changes. Many states, including Ohio, temporarily used this authority until system changes could be made to computer systems to comply with the new law. Without this flexibility, Ohio would have seen a spike in its payment error rate for SNAP.
Ohio should also preserve its authority to exempt certain Ohioans from SNAP’s harsh 3-month time limit.
In addition to the need for this administrative flexibility, Ohio should also preserve its authority to exempt certain Ohioans from SNAP’s harsh 3-month time limit. For example, without this authority:
- Ohio could not exempt all domestic violence survivors from the requirement to work 80+ hours/month to keep SNAP benefits.
- A working Ohioan may have to pay back SNAP benefits for any month when their employer cut their hours (e.g., from 20 to 19 hours/week) and they reported it to their SNAP caseworker, but the change wasn’t processed quickly enough in the computer system.
- Ohio could not prevent Ohioans from losing SNAP benefits after 3 months, even if they are actively taking part in an Employment and Training program but not getting access to 80+ hours of work, education, or training activity in a month.
Mischaracterizing discretionary exemptions
The out-of-state lobbyists advocating for this restriction in other states call discretionary exemptions “no good cause exemptions”—which is inaccurate and misleading. Ohio can only exempt up to 8% of the caseload subject to the 3-month time limit and they rarely use more than a few hundred discretionary exemptions each year—and there’s always a good reason.
If the legislature wants to better understand how SNAP’s discretionary exemptions are used in Ohio, they should work with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to study the issue, rather than outright banning their use.
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