About 2.7 million New Yorkers receive the food benefit known as SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It had been a 50-50 split between the federal government and New York state counties which administer the benefit. But in 2025, under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that calculus changed. Now, New York state counties must come up with 75% of the money to administer the program, while the federal government spends 25%.
In most other states, it’s the state that implements SNAP, but not in New York, New Jersey or North Carolina.
New York state counties are now sounding the alarm over two issues, the higher costs to implement the program, and the higher costs of so-called “error rate” penalties that will kick in in 2027.
In a conversation with Capital Tonight, both Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, and Dan McCoy, the Albany County executive, are urging Gov. Kathy Hochul to help counties pay the extra cost.
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“The state has to make this up. This will destroy counties’ property tax base. This will destroy any opportunity for New York counties to stay under the state-imposed property tax cap,” Acquario told Capital Tonight. “We’ve already seen a dozen counties breech that tax cap in 2026, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If any of these costs are shifted onto county governments, there is no way that they can stay under a state-imposed property tax cap.”
The cost of the shift onto counties for a year is estimated to be an additional $168 million.
“This year alone, in October, we [Albany County] have to come up with $750,000” McCoy said. “We’ve been lobbying the state to cover that, which we have not heard back. Next year, if this stays the way it is, we’re looking at over $13 million that we have to come up with.”
When asked how he would make up that revenue, McCoy mentioned either raising taxes or utilizing reserves.
“We haven’t raised taxes in 12 years,” he said. “This is forcing our hand.”
While this administrative change kicks in in October, the more expensive cost-shift that counties will have to bear will come into play next October, 2027: the error rate cost-shift.
“That means [the number of] improper filings were done administratively by the counties in the state of New York in reporting the 3 million recipients from the state of New York,” Acquario explained.
“Gov. Hochul, please help the counties stay under the property tax cap,” Acquario stated when asked what he would like to say to the governor. “The state has to rescue the counties from this situation.”
An emailed request for comment to the Hochul administration was not answered.
