Food Stamp Program: Error Rate Adjustments and Sanctions : Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition, Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives

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Page 22 - Nutrition Service said that the report generally presented an objective description of the subject material and that the information in our report was factually correct. While they agreed with our conclusions that it would be appropriate to find alternative ways to levy financial sanctions on states for not-completed reviews, they were concerned that our recommendation could be interpreted as suggesting the development of a separate sanction system. We are not advocating that the Service develop...
Page 1 - Service may adjust (increase) a state's error rate for not completing the prescribed number of reviews and for reporting less in payment errors than actually occurred. The resulting number is the official error rate, which is used to determine the state's sanction, if any.1 In summary, we found that Adjustments for not-completed case reviews were relatively small for 1984 and 1985. In only one case did the adjustment increase a state's sanction. In that case, however, a minor adjustment increasing...
Page 2 - Service quality control reviews of a statistically selected sample of households participating in the program.
Page 2 - Service with federal financing of (1) 100 percent of the food stamp benefits — about $ 10.6 billion in fiscal year 1986 — and (2) about half of the states' administrative expenses — about $947 million in federal costs for fiscal year 1986. The states are responsible for the program's day-to-day operations and are required by the Service to conduct quality control reviews to identify...
Page 12 - The Food Stamp Program was authorized by the Food Stamp Act of 1964, as amended, and is designed to help low-income households that meet program eligibility requirements obtain more nutritious diets.
Page 16 - The standard deviation, a statistical term, measures the dispersion of the errors in the state's sample from its average error. As the state's error rate increases, the standard deviation tends to increase. In addition, the standard deviation varies inversely with the state's sample size — states with small samples tend to have larger standard deviations, compared with states with larger samples.
Page 3 - ... Alaska's adjustment was larger, but it did not invoke an additional financial penalty because the resulting error rate did not exceed the state's target error rate. In addition, the size of the adjustment may (1) vary for states with the same or similar completion rates for quality control reviews or (2) be the same for states with different completion rates. For example, table 1 shows that Virginia and New Jersey both had completion rates of 93 Page 3 percent, yet the adjustments were 0.10 and...
Page 6 - The noncompletion adjustment is used to encourage states to complete required quality control reviews and thus avoid an increase in their error rates and potential increase in their sanctions. Although USDA has the authority to adjust states...
Page 24 - This information may change slightly as differences between federal and state review findings are resolved...
Page 1 - ... 1984 and 1985. In only one case did the adjustment increase a state's sanction. In that case, however, a minor adjustment increasing the error rate substantially increased that state's sanction for 1984. 'The sanction amount can be very sensitive to the small changes in the error rate caused by these adjustments.

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