Federal Costs and Complexity Led the State to Reject Summer Food Aid
STATEWIDE — Indiana is one of just a dozen states opting out of a summertime food aid program for hungry schoolchildren.
While anti-hunger advocates hope for a reversal, Indiana Family and Social Services Administration officials say the agency wasn’t appropriated the money required — and is busy planning for federal changes that could add a whopping $260 million a year to the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program expenses.
“If we could figure out how to do SUN Bucks in a more integrated way … but we just don’t have the bandwidth, nor the funding,” FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob told the Capital Chronicle.
SUN Bucks provides $120 in grocery benefits across a summer per eligible school-age child. The federal government covers the benefit, and splits administrative costs 50-50 with states.
The program began as a pilot, but debuted nationwide in 2024. About 669,000 Hoosier school-age children participated that summer, with a collective $80 million loaded onto their debit-like electronic benefit transfer cards.
School breakfasts and lunches can be many students’ only reliable meals, and they lose access when the academic year ends.
“SNAP benefits don’t change in the summer. So, you know, when kids are home, it’s not as though there’s any additional benefit that families have to help pay the grocery bill,” said Emily Bryant, the executive director of Feeding Indiana’s Hungry.
“This program was very successful in mediating the serious dangers of increase in child food insecurity during the pandemic,” Bryant said, referring to the temporary Pandemic EBT in place before SUN Bucks was established as a permanent option.
Gov. Mike Braun’s nascent administration didn’t take part in SUN Bucks last summer, and says the state will opt out this summer, too.
“The state of Indiana did it one time, and that was coming out of COVID,” Roob said. “And then, honestly, the previous administration didn’t plan to do it in 2025, so by the time we got here, that decision had been made for us — and there was not a legislative appropriation to do it for the upcoming year.
“Once you extend a a benefit, even on a temporary basis … taking it back is very painful,” he acknowledged.
Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia currently plan to participate, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program at the federal level.
Indiana is one of 12 that won’t, along with Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.
Costs and benefits
The state and advocates differ on the initiative’s worth.
“The SUN Bucks program is extremely expensive to operate, and provides relatively little additional supplemental nutritional assistance,” Roob said.
SUN Bucks oversight was expected to cost the state about $3.7 million last summer. But expenses will seemingly more than triple, according to FSSA spokesman Marcus Barlow.
“We estimate the cost per year for Administration of the program to be between $12 million and $15 million,” Barlow wrote.
He added states must set up a “temporary summer infrastructure” to distribute the benefits, which is “why it costs so much.”
Bryant, of Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, acknowledged that while SNAP has higher administrative costs, it pulls down significantly more in benefits from the federal government — upwards of $100 million monthly across the program’s 570,000 Hoosier participants, according to FSSA’s latest quarterly financial report.
But SUN Bucks targets the state’s most vulnerable: kids, she said.
“The return on investment may not be as large as what they like to see for larger programs, but when there are over 600,000 kids who would be eligible for this program, that’s impactful for those families,” Bryant said.
Her organization was among the more than 90 private-sector, faith-based and nonprofit organizations that signed a letter urging Braun, FSSA and the state Department of Education to approve Indiana’s participation in SUN Bucks.
Price tag rising
Indiana’s cost concerns go beyond SUN Bucks, however.
States could be on the hook for millions of additional SNAP expenses annually under the latest federal reconciliation law, better known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
States currently pay 50% of the cost to administer SNAP, but beginning Oct. 1, 2026, they’ll be on the hook for 75%.
That’s expected to cost Indiana $37 million in the 2027 state fiscal year, which begins July 1 and ends June 30, and about $50 million annually after, according to FSSA’s latest quarterly financial report.
That could complicate the argument for SUN Bucks next summer, but advocates are still working to build support, said Mark Lynch, the director of advocacy for the Indy Hunger Network.
“We’ll start focusing on ’27 for SUN Bucks — knowing that it’s a long shot, because that’s going to be even closer to when they’re going to have to start these cost shares,” he said.
Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states will also pay a percentage of benefit costs depending on the rate of errors they make in distributing the funds — overpayments and underpayments. Indiana logged a 9.27% payment error rate in the 2024 federal fiscal year, per the report. That runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
That percentage would’ve cost the state an estimated $143 million in a year. Fewer mistakes could lower the hit to $72 million or even $0, but a rate higher than 10% would cost $214 million.
Roob said FSSA is hiring 65 more employees to lower Indiana’s payment error rate.
“The cost equation here is a pretty simple one, right? It’s much cheaper to hire 65 people than it is to pay $70 million,” he said.
The changes don’t end there.
Braun has embarked on a variety of state-level alterations to SNAP, most prominently by directing FSSA to secure federal permission to block recipients from buying sugary drinks or candy with their benefits. Dubbed “Smart SNAP,” it went into effect Jan. 1.
Other executive orders would add Hoosiers exempt from SNAP work requirements to an existing but “underutilized” state employment and training program; tighten asset eligibility tests for SNAP and scrutinize the program’s efficacy.
They were announced at a “Make Indiana Healthy Again” event in April headlined by two celebrity members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet: U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
State lawmakers are also considering changes.
Senate Bill 1, a priority proposal for the chamber’s Republican caucus, would end Indiana’s expanded eligibility for SNAP, which allows those with slightly more assets to participate than under the federal baseline. That would push an estimated 3,000 households off the program, according to a fiscal analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.
Other provisions would set legal status requirements for SNAP participants — but count all of the income and assets of ineligible immigrants toward their household’s eligibility determination and benefit allotment.
“I’m very concerned about the ideological focus of a lot of the legislation and administrative actions,” said Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, speaking generally about recent moves. Clere is a prominent Statehouse advocate for SUN Bucks, SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.
“It may be well-intended, but it misses the mark if our big-picture goal is a more efficient and accountable system providing the best possible value for for all Hoosiers,” he said.
Looking elsewhere
Struggling Indiana residents can locate other summertime food help via DOE’s Summer Food Service Program.
Roob also highlighted the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program administered in Indiana by the Department of Health, along with food banks and pantries across the state.
“Our food banks have always and continue to serve folks in need … any time of the year, and that’s never going to change,” Bryant said.
But, she added, “We will continue to make the case that participating in federal nutrition programs … are more efficient and effective because they are at scale.”
Lynch, of the Indy Hunger Network, said food pantries noticed an increase in demand over the summer, “long before” a federal shutdown delayed SNAP benefit disbursement in the fall.
“We know what it looks like now,” he said of the demand.
Hoosiers can find free food — and stores that take SNAP and WIC — statewide using the network’s Community Compass website.
Food insecurity has risen in Indiana, according to a USDA report released late last year.
“There’s still so much hunger in Indiana, and there shouldn’t be — there doesn’t need to be,” said Clere. “… We have enough resources to reduce and ultimately eliminate hunger, but we often fail to make it a priority and to take advantage of resources that are available, and SUN Bucks is a great example.”
“We ought to be able to look past (administrative and other costs) for the benefit of the children who would … be better-fed and less hungry, and able to have a better summer and a better childhood,” he said. “That’s really what it comes down to.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries in Indiana. It is about 570,000.
