Granville County social services warns HR1 will shift SNAP, Medicaid costs and increase workload

Granville County Social Services on Friday briefed commissioners on program and staffing pressures tied to new federal rules and state legislative changes. Miss Taylor, Social Services director, said the agency has 110 full-time employees with 18 vacancies and has returned about $5 million in revenue to the county over the last four years. She warned that HR1, signed into law as reported in the materials presented, will expand SNAP work and reporting requirements to adults up to age 64 and many parents of teenagers; it also broadens groups subject to work requirements, including some veterans and people exiting foster care.

Taylor said the federal government will cut its share of SNAP (FNS) administrative costs from 50% to 25% effective October 2026, a change commissioners were told will push a larger share of administrative expenses onto counties. She added that if North Carolina’s SNAP error rate exceeds 6% by 2028, counties could be required to share some benefit costs. Granville County’s FNS benefits total about $14.4 million a year and the county’s officials noted that federal sampling of a small number of cases can dramatically change an error rate calculation.

The director also described parallel changes for Medicaid expansion: new work requirements for adults 19–64 enrolled through expansion, more frequent eligibility reviews (moving to six-month re‑determinations for expansion cases), cuts in retroactive coverage to one or two months in 2027, and possible cost-sharing and co-pays for expansion enrollees starting in 2028. Staffing and training needs will increase, Taylor said, though she told the board the agency is trying to repurpose vacant positions and be proactive rather than reactive to these rules.

Taylor outlined other local program data used to plan responses: the county currently serves roughly 3,100 expansion enrollees and about 16,738 Medicaid recipients overall; child-protective referrals have risen since the county implemented a new electronic child‑welfare system; and the county is administering 108 recipients of special assistance, a program now an entitlement under Session Laws 2021‑180. On program integrity, staff have opened multiple investigations and identified roughly $56,451 in potential paybacks this year, with $50,927 collected so far.

Commissioners asked whether the department will need more staff to manage the new work and reporting burdens; Taylor said the workload will increase but the agency hopes to repurpose positions and escalate advocacy with state and federal officials to seek financial mitigation. The county manager later told the board the county is monitoring revenue and reserve capacity but urged advocacy at the legislature and HHS to reduce the local burden.

The board requested follow-up information about local labor-market statistics for adults aged 18–64, error-rate sampling methodology, and the county’s current FNS and Medicaid case counts. The Social Services update was one of several department presentations at the retreat that also included finance, human resources, planning and the sheriff’s office.