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Auditors cite customer‑service, monitoring and SNAP payment errors at Arizona Department of Economic Security
Summary
Auditor General staff told the committee that DES had service and oversight failures across unemployment insurance, monitoring for Area Agencies on Aging, developmentally disabled services incident classification, and an elevated SNAP improper payment rate; DES said it has implemented one‑third of 71 recommendations and expects more progress in FY26, and the committee continued the department for four years.
The audit team presented highlights from four Department of Economic Security (DES) reviews covering unemployment insurance customer service, monitoring of Area Agencies on Aging, incident classification and investigation for developmental‑disability services (DDD), and SNAP improper payments.
Auditors reported that in calendar year 2023, 75% of calls to DES’s UI call center were unanswered and maximum daily wait times ranged from one to three hours on many days, which can hinder claimants’ access to benefits. The auditors also found DES had not conducted timely on‑site monitoring reviews for five of eight Area Agencies on Aging, leaving overdue monitoring by three months to more than three years.
On DDD incident oversight, auditors found the department often classified incidents as not meeting the threshold for a quality‑of‑care concern when vendors reported remediation; in calendar year 2024 auditors said DES did not classify more than 34,000 incidents as quality‑of‑care concerns in that manner (about 83% of incidents received that year). That choice meant DES did not investigate or verify vendor remediation as required by ACCESS contract policy, potentially leaving safety issues unaddressed.
Auditors also highlighted DES’s SNAP improper payment rate: approximately 8.8% in federal fiscal year 2024, a rate that could expose the state to a large federal match requirement under recent federal changes. Auditors showed how the state match could range from roughly $100 million to $300 million depending on future error rates and decisions about which year’s rate to use for calculation.
Michael Weishardt, DES director, said the department has implemented more than one‑third of the 71 auditor recommendations and expects over 50% implemented in FY26; he said DES is using public‑private partnerships to augment call center capacity and has a detailed action plan for SNAP remediation and other items. The committee moved and approved a recommendation to continue DES for four years until 07/01/2030 with statutory changes to improve operations; members asked for more details on SNAP remediation plans and asked DES to provide its detailed action plan to members.
