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Auditors say federal privacy rules prevent determining TANF payment error rate
Summary
Legislative auditors told the committee they could not assess TANF payment accuracy because federal law restricts access to applicant financial records and DCF's supervisory reviews are nonrandom and inconsistent; DCF said it conducts internal checks and could extend a SNAP-style sample for TANF.
Legislative auditors reported the TANF Part 2 audit could not determine the rate of improper TANF benefit payments because federal law prevented access to the detailed applicant information state auditors would need.
Heidi Zimmerman of Legislative Post Audit said auditors asked whether the Department for Children and Families (DCF) had made improper TANF payments. "The data that DCF provided to us was not sufficient or reliable for the purposes of answering this audit question," Zimmerman said, citing two problems: supervisory case reviews were not chosen randomly and often only assessed whether staff followed procedures rather than whether benefit amounts were accurate, and federal restrictions prevent sharing some applicant financial details with state auditors.
Heidi noted DCF does run internal supervisory reviews and has reimplemented a review process suspended during COVID, but those checks are designed for staff performance and are not uniformly applied or reported upward. The audit team reviewed DCF's provided case-level data for fiscal year 2025 but said it could not produce a statistically valid error rate from the materials available.
DCF officials told the committee they maintain electronic eligibility checks (for example, an interface with the Social Security Administration) and that, unlike SNAP, federal law does not require states to calculate or report TANF payment accuracy. A DCF representative said the TANF program is relatively small, "about $9,000,000," and the agency could extend SNAP-style statistical sampling methods to other TANF households if directed.
Committee requests and follow-up: members asked DCF to report back on whether funding budgeted for adding photo IDs to EBT cards was spent and to provide a report on ATM usage patterns for benefit cards. Committee members also suggested DCF consider designing and publishing a valid internal sampling methodology to produce a TANF payment error rate if federal law prevents auditors from accessing needed data directly.
The committee accepted the audit presentation and asked staff to follow up on funding and sample-design options.
