St. Croix County’s economic-support team told the Health and Human Services Board it is caught up on FoodShare (SNAP) benefits after federal funding resumed and outlined plans to reduce payment-error rates while exploring technology improvements to ease staff workloads.

Rhonda Brown, the county’s economic support administrator, said DHS notified consortia on Nov. 13 that the federal funding pause had ended and that November benefits confirmed after Nov. 1 were issued. Brown said subsequent federal legislation funded SNAP through September of the next federal fiscal year and that the county’s consortia call center remained operational during the shutdown.

Brown warned the board that administrative and policy changes from the federal "one big bill" (HR1 referenced in conference discussions) will be phased in and require significant system work. She said the county is beginning to implement expanded work requirements on a rolling basis and that any member impacted by the change will receive written notice as required by law.

On quality control, Brown reported statewide active SNAP error rates through June at 6.17% and 6.61% for the Great Rivers consortia, noting the target threshold is under 6%. She described training, coaching and data reviews underway to bring error rates down, and emphasized that many errors are administrative or client-reporting mistakes rather than fraud.

Brown also summarized takeaways from the American Public Human Services Association IT Solutions Management Conference (conference site reported as Reno, Nevada): vendors such as Deloitte, IBM and GainWell demonstrated tools for automation, conversational AI, intelligent document processing and predictive analytics. She said local staff are considering pilots for conversational bots to triage calls, intelligent document ingestion to reduce data-entry burden, and ‘‘low-code/no-code’’ solutions to accelerate system changes.

Brown emphasized workforce impacts and safeguards: she called for cross-disciplinary planning, reskilling staff rather than replacing them, limiting high-stakes automation (for example, not delegating eligibility determinations to AI without human oversight), and evaluating pilot results before scaling. She said DHS and vendor partners are encouraging local input and that county staff are preparing materials to ensure consistent responses when state agencies request feedback.

Board members asked technical and policy questions about error types, vendor interoperability and administrative funding; staff said some administrative funding shifts and match changes at the state level will affect county operations but that prior board resolutions requesting state support should help mitigate impacts.

The presentation closed with an encouragement to pursue measured pilots and to balance technology gains with staff training; no policy changes were approved at the meeting.