Wisconsin lawmakers vote to audit FoodShare

MADISON, Wis. (Gray) - Wisconsin lawmakers voted to audit the state’s FoodShare program on Tuesday. FoodShare provides state SNAP benefits for roughly 700,000 Wisconsinites.

“It’s important for us to catch up our knowledge at the deeper level since we haven’t done the performance evaluation work since 2012,” Joe Chrisman, Wisconsin state auditor, said.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump last summer, states must have less than a 6% error rate or they must pay for a portion of their SNAP benefits.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, those fines could be up to $200 million annually in Wisconsin.

In 2025, Wisconsin had an error rate of 5.72%. That comes from errors like misspelled addresses. The average error rate nationally is 10.62%.

“We take this penalty very seriously and you can tell me well it’s below 6%, but it’s at 5.7%. All we need is one hiccup and things are going to go the wrong way for us,” said state Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Racine, co-chair of the Committee on Audit.

Wisconsin was one of just nine states that had an error rate low enough to avoid financial penalties from the federal government, according to Wisconsin DHS.

“We collectively should be very proud of our state’s administration of food share. Wisconsin ranks first in the nation for timeliness of application processing,” Secretary Kirsten Johnson, Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

The FoodShare audit passed with a 6 to 4 vote. State Sen. Robert Wirch, state Sen. Melissa Ratcliff, state Rep. Francesca Hong and state Rep. Sequanna Taylor, all Democrats on the committee, voted against it. The Democratic lawmakers did not share why they voted against the audit during the hearing.

The audit could analyze program costs, eligibility policies and practices, and trends in the number of benefit recipients.

Click here to download the WMTV15 News app or our WMTV15 First Alert weather app.