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Arkansas DHS emergency rule implements Act 675 of 2023, sets SNAP resource limit at $5,500
Summary
The committee approved an emergency rule from the Arkansas Department of Human Services to implement Act 675 of 2023 by adding a broad-based categorical eligibility definition and raising resource limits to $5,500 for SNAP-eligible households; the rule was approved without objection and set to take effect April 5, 2025.
Christy Putnam, secretary of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, presented an emergency rule to implement Act 675 of 2023 that establishes a broad-based categorical eligibility definition for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) households and sets resource limits at $5,500.
Putnam said the department initially believed additional state match funding was required but, after technical assistance and legal clarification, identified a benefit that could be extended to all SNAP-eligible households and prepared the rule within about a week. "This is a complicated issue to understand, but we made it more complicated than it needed to be," Putnam said. "We were under the impression initially that we needed to look for some state match funding. What we needed to do was look for a benefit that could be extended to all households that could be considered SNAP eligible."
The committee reviewed and approved the proposed emergency rule without objection. The review and approval were recorded as effective 12:01 a.m., Saturday, April 5, 2025. Committee members asked about the delay in the rule's preparation; Putnam attributed the timeline to initial misunderstandings about matching requirements and said the department moved quickly after receiving technical and legal guidance.
The rule changes announced by DHS add an explicit eligibility definition and update the resource limit to $5,500 for households in compliance with Act 675 of 2023. No statutory citations beyond the act number were supplied in the presentation and committee members did not request a roll-call vote; the committee approved the emergency rule by unanimous voice vote, described in the record as "without objection."
The committee chair urged staff to be more expeditious on future rule work. The action does not itself expand benefit amounts beyond the resource limit set in the rule; it implements eligibility mechanics described under Act 675 of 2023.
The committee did not record a roll-call tally in the transcript; the approval was made by voice vote and entered as "review and approval" with the effective date noted above.
