Texas Health Council Hears What a Federal SNAP Penalty Could Cost the State

The council that sits atop Texas’ health and human services agencies meets Sept. 17 to hear what a coming federal food-stamp penalty could cost the state. Agency officials have told senators the bill could reach $2.1 billion in the next two-year budget.

Washington now pays the whole cost of food-stamp benefits. Starting in October 2027, the federal budget law Congress passed in 2025 makes states with high payment-error rates cover part of the benefit cost themselves. Texas’ 2025 error rate was 9.34 percent, which the U.S. Agriculture Department released in June, putting the state in the tier that owes 10 percent. At a Senate Finance hearing in July, the Health and Human Services Commission put the exposure at $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion for 2028-29 and told lawmakers the rate measures paperwork mistakes, not fraud. A second change lands sooner: the state’s share of the program’s administrative costs rises from half to three-quarters on Oct. 1, roughly $117 million a year.

The timing is the hard part. The commission filed its 2028-29 budget request Sept. 4, built around the 3 percent cut to base spending that Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows ordered every agency to make in July. But the Agriculture Department is not expected to certify the error rate that fixes the final penalty until after the Legislature has written the budget. The council gets an update on both. Legislative budget writers and the governor’s office take up the request at a joint hearing Sept. 24.

Also up is a rewrite of the rules governing the state’s assisted living facilities, which date to 1991. The agency proposes 83 amendments, 91 repeals and 30 new sections — requiring a planned activity every day rather than once a week, holding resident records five years, dropping the on-site health inspection at license renewal, and adding a procedure for a facility that closes voluntarily. The agency floated a version in December 2023, drew more than 200 comments, many from providers calling it too burdensome, and withdrew it. Comment on the new draft closes Oct. 5.

Fourteen other rule packages are listed, among them one the agency says adds protections for people examined for emergency detention; its comment period was scheduled to open Sept. 11, which the Dispatch could not confirm against the Texas Register before publication. The council will vote on none of it. State law lets it take public comment but bars it from making administrative or policy decisions — the executive commissioner adopts the rules.

Meeting at a glance

Council members

• Stephanie Muth — chair; HHSC executive commissioner since January 2026.
• Trey Wood — HHSC chief financial and operations officer.
• Stephanie Stephens — HHSC chief Medicaid and CHIP services officer.
• Jordan Dixon — chief behavioral health, disability and aging services officer.
• David Kostroun — HHSC chief regulatory services officer.
• Molly Regan — HHSC chief of family resources and eligibility services.
• Sylvia Hernandez Kauffman — HHSC chief information officer.
• Audrey O’Neill — Austin; commissioner, Department of Family and Protective Services.
• Imelda Garcia — Austin; interim commissioner, Department of State Health Services.
• Raymond Charles Winter — HHSC inspector general.

Roster from the agency’s Executive Council page, checked against the agency’s executive-team page and the governor’s appointment releases. This council is not a citizen board: under Government Code Chapter 523 its members are the executive commissioner, HHSC’s division directors and the heads of the sister agencies, who sit by virtue of the jobs they hold; the executive commissioner chairs it and may add others. The governor does not appoint to it, and HHSC does not publish members’ home cities, so cities appear above only where the governor’s office has stated one. The Department of State Health Services has had only an interim commissioner since June. Staff contact: the Executive Council liaison, (512) 438-2169.