Illinois will get an extra year, until October 2028, before it must begin sharing the cost of food assistance benefits with the federal government, after the state’s own payment error rate climbed high enough to qualify for a delay built into a sweeping federal law.

But the reprieve doesn’t erase the threat to the state budget. Illinois’ eventual share of the cost is now estimated at $550 million, according to an analysis released this month by the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group, down from an earlier projection of $700 million, largely because fewer people are now receiving benefits.

Under the law, states whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, error rate exceeds roughly 13% get an extra year before facing cost-sharing requirements that hit most other states starting in October 2027. Illinois’ error rate — 14.67% for the federal fiscal year that ended in September 2025 — cleared that threshold, according to experts’ analysis of the law and interviews with advocates.

The payment error rate measures over- or underpayments, often caused by mistakes by caseworkers or applicants, not fraud, advocates say.

“It’s going to be incredibly important for our elected officials in the General Assembly to start to prepare now for how we’re going to absorb that cost, because losing the program is just not an option,” said Greater Chicago Food Depository senior policy director Nolan Downey.

So when he saw Illinois’ rate of errors on food assistance payments had skyrocketed according to the most recent federal data, Downey had a reaction that might seem unexpected.

“I’m going to be honest that my reaction was relief,” Downey said. “I know that’s at least one more year that SNAP will not be in jeopardy in the state.”

The stakes trace back to the sweeping domestic policy law President Donald Trump signed last summer as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which added new work requirements for SNAP recipients and, for the first time, required states with error rates above 6% to share in the cost of benefits — a program that has traditionally been fully funded by the federal government. Advocates say the emphasis on error rates will push people off food assistance.

Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Summer Griffith said in a recent email that the federal payment “scheme” was “highly punitive” and “unprecedented.”

A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson confirmed the implementation delay that affects Illinois, which previously led to the dire state budget predictions.

“However, there is no excuse for the State to allow $1.8 million per day to be issued in erroneous SNAP benefits. This is a heinous abuse of taxpayer resources and flies in the face of program integrity. Illinoisans should demand more from their State government,” USDA spokesperson Michael Abboud said in an email.

Gov. JB Pritzker said last month that the reported error rate, which covers the year ending in September 2025, is outdated, and that the state has since brought the rate down below even the 11% reported for the previous fiscal year, though he declined to provide an exact figure.

“We’re trying to keep up with those numbers, but they’re headed in the right direction, and they’re better than they were when we started on this journey,” Pritzker said.

The goal of the federal government is to “push people off of SNAP,” Pritzker said, adding: “I am working like heck to make sure that we’re not throwing people off.”

In recent months, “Illinois has launched an aggressive, multi-year effort to improve payment accuracy,” IDHS’ Griffith said, including staff training, additional caseworkers and technology and communication improvements. The state is also lobbying Congress to push the cost-sharing penalties back even further to October 2029, she said.

The one-year delay for high-error-rate states was widely seen as a concession to win the support of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican from Alaska whose sparsely populated state has had persistently high error rates for years. States with error rates above about 13.32% qualify for the delay, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.

Jeremy Rosen, policy director for Workers Center for Racial Justice, warned against the state pushing off the problem or banking on the law changing before Illinois has to pay.

“We should be treating this as a grave emergency,” Rosen said, “and we should be doing budgetary and financial planning to make sure that we have the revenue in place to pay whatever we’re going to need to pay to keep this program going.”

Illinois Democrats in the General Assembly this year created a $70 million program to provide $400 in direct payments to state residents who are booted from SNAP under the new work requirements, which now apply to previously exempt groups such as adults ages 55 to 64.

Nationally, the SNAP error rate for the most recent fiscal year decreased slightly, according to the USDA.

In addition to the conflict with the federal government over the error rate and potential penalties, USDA’s Office of Inspector General has also issued two subpoenas against IDHS seeking data about SNAP participants, a spokesperson for the state human services department said.

The deadline hasn’t passed, the IDHS spokesperson said. At least one of the subpoenas came after USDA’s OIG requested data from the 10 states; a number of red states responded, and four states led by Democrats did not, according to a USDA OIG news release.

“IDHS continues to correspond with USDA OIG regarding the subpoenas, including regarding the need for a data sharing agreement to ensure that sensitive customer data remains protected, consistent with federal law,” the IDHS spokesperson said.

The state “continues to withhold data from the Department of Agriculture,” Abboud said.

The Associated Press contributed.