(The Center Square) – Late payments of $83 million over a four-year period in North Carolina’s food stamps program with no corrective action under the direction of former health secretaries Mandy Cohen and Kody Kinsley in the Cooper administration have been uncovered in a state audit.
“Approximately $83 million in benefits, which are federally funded and overseen by the North Carolina of Health and Human Services, Division of Child and Family Well-Being, were delayed from 2021 to 2024,” the office of first-term Republican Auditor Dave Boliek said Wednesday.
Taxpayers provided the state with an estimated $15.7 billion for SNAP benefit payments from 2021 to 2024, the auditor’s office says.
Cohen was former two-term Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s leader of the Health Department before former President Joe Biden picked her to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kinsley, in charge as Medicaid was expanded in the state, succeeded her and went on to a role as senior policy advisor at the Institute for Policy Solutions at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
Cooper is running for the U.S. Senate in 2026.
The Performance Audit Report said leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services between Feb. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2024, “made the decision not to issue formal corrective actions.” It said, “The lack of corrective action occurred when several counties issued as many as 20-25% of benefit payments in an untimely manner.”
In a statement, Boliek said, “The State Auditor’s Office is committed to holding government accountable for being efficient. In this case, despite repeatedly seeing there were delays in the distribution of SNAP benefits, DHHS chose not to enforce corrective actions. It is troubling that DHHS leadership doesn’t believe tracking untimely benefit amounts would improve efficiency. Measuring performance provides transparency and results on the spending of taxpayer dollars.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as SNAP and food stamps, is administered at the federal level by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It sets rules, authorizations and monitors retailers. In North Carolina, state and local agencies administer the program, with the Health Department “ultimately responsible” to be in accord with the law and benefit payments made in a timely fashion, the audit says.
Between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2024, untimely benefit payments were 24.9% in Davidson County, 22.2% in Edgecombe County, 22% in Wake County, 21.2% in Mecklenburg County, 19.6% in Pitt County, 14.4% in Cumberland County, and 14.2% in Stanly County.
Mecklenburg County’s 71,385 untimely applications were the highest volume. Wake was 38,945, Cumberland 26,322, Pitt 15,801 and Davidson 15,330.
