Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Review Handbook Incorporation by Reference

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Food and Nutrition Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 275</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FNS-2024-0030]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0584-AF05</RIN> <SUBJECT>Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Review Handbook Incorporation by Reference</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking, incorporation by reference. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Department of Agriculture (the Department) is issuing this proposed rule to formally incorporate by reference the FNS Handbook 310 into SNAP regulations. By doing so, the Department is ensuring that the public receives a notice and comment period prior to implementation of revisions to the Handbook, which is the standard operating procedure manual for conducting quality control (QC) reviews of SNAP cases. The Department also proposes to remove reference to FNS Handbook 311 until it can be incorporated by reference. The Department requests comment on these proposed provisions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before March 4, 2024 to ensure their consideration. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The Food and Nutrition Service, USDA, invites interested persons to submit written comments on this proposed rule. Comments may be submitted in writing by one of the following methods: <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> — <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> — <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to John McCleskey, Branch Chief, Quality Control Branch, Program Administration and Nutrition Division; Food and Nutrition Service; 1320 Braddock Place, 5th Floor; Alexandria, Virginia 22314. </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> — <E T="03">Email:</E> Send comments to <E T="03">SM.FN.SNAPHQ-WEB@usda.gov.</E> Include “SNAP QC Review Handbook Incorporation by Reference” in the subject line of the message. </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> —All written comments submitted in response to this proposed rule will be included in the record and will be made available to the public. Please be advised that the substance of the comments and the identity of the individuals or entities submitting the comments will be subject to public disclosure. FNS will make the written comments publicly available on the internet via <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> —FNS Handbook 310, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Review Handbook, can be viewed online at <E T="03">https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/qc.</E> </FP> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> John McCleskey, 703-457-7747, Food and Nutrition Service, 1320 Braddock Place, 5th Floor; Alexandria, Virginia 22314, <E T="03">SM.FN.SNAPHQ-WEB@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">SNAP QC—In General</HD> The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's largest domestic food assistance program for Americans, reaching about 42 million people per month during fiscal year 2023. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap.</E> </FTNT> Although the Federal government funds SNAP benefits per 7 U.S.C. 2020(a)(1), State agencies are responsible for general program administration of SNAP within their States, including determining the eligibility of individuals and households to receive SNAP benefits and issuing monthly allotments of benefits. Pursuant to Section 16 of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (FNA), as amended, each State agency is responsible for monitoring and improving its administration of SNAP. The Quality Control (QC) system is necessary to help ensure State agencies measure improper payments and improve their administration of SNAP. SNAP QC reviews have four goals, identified at 7 CFR 275.10(b), which are to provide: (1) a systematic method of measuring the validity of the SNAP eligibility caseload; (2) a basis for determining all SNAP error rates; (3) a timely, continuous flow of information on which to base corrective action at all levels of administration; and (4) a basis for establishing State agency liability for payment errors that exceed the National performance measure pursuant to Section 16(c)(1)(C) of the FNA. To comply with Section 16 of the FNA, State agencies conduct monthly reviews of a statistically representative sample of both participating SNAP households (active cases) and households for whom participation was denied, terminated, or suspended (negative cases). Once the State's review is complete, the case is submitted to FNS for possible Federal re-review. The role of the Federal reviewer is to validate the State reviews were done accurately and in accordance with Federal SNAP policies and procedures. QC reviews measure the accuracy of SNAP eligibility and allotment determinations and ultimately serve as the basis for the SNAP payment error rate (PER) and case and procedural error rate (CAPER). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The results of these reviews provide feedback on State-by-State and national administration of the Program, including how State agencies' chosen policy options, waivers, and business processes affect the accuracy of their eligibility determinations. In short, the QC system allows FNS and the States to assess the integrity of SNAP and ensure effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars by determining the extent to which the program is operating as required by statute and regulations. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  FNS refers to the negative case error rate as the case and procedural error rate, or CAPER. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Background Information on FNS Handbook 310</HD> The FNS Handbook 310, the “SNAP QC Review Handbook”, is the standard operating procedure manual for conducting QC reviews of SNAP cases. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The FNS Handbook 310 provides both State and Federal QC reviewers with procedures for the QC review process for active and negative cases. This procedural manual aligns with SNAP's statutory and Federal regulatory program rules to ensure its process for evaluating SNAP eligibility and allotments delivers accurate results. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/snap/FNS_310_Handbook.pdf.</E> </FTNT> The FNS Handbook 310 was first introduced into regulation in the July 29, 1983, proposed rule titled, <E T="03">Food Stamp Program; Technical Amendments to the Quality Control Review Process.</E> <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Following publication of the proposed rule, the Department received comments indicating State agencies needed a consistent, complete, national handbook for conducting QC reviews of SNAP cases that would also be continually updated as SNAP policies are updated and changed. The handbook provisions were implemented with the February 17, 1984, final rule titled, <E T="03">Food Stamp Program, Quality Control Reviews.</E> <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The provisions in the final rule require State agencies to use FNS-designed handbooks, worksheets, and coding forms in the QC review process to ensure consistency of reviews nationwide. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1983-07-29/pdf/FR-1983-07-29.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">https://archives.federalregister.gov/issue_slice/1984/2/17/6278-6313.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Incorporation by Reference</HD> The Department proposes, at 7 CFR 275.14(b), to incorporate by reference the FNS Handbook 310, “SNAP QC Review Handbook”, dated October 2024, and add a centralized IBR paragraph at 7 CFR 275.14(f). In the 1984 final rule, the Department included the FNS Handbook 310 in the code of Federal regulations but did not specifically undertake the incorporation by reference (IBR) process. This rule addresses that oversight. The FNS Handbook 310 is readily available to all interested parties. The FNS Handbook 310 is publicly available as listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this proposed rule. Additionally, the FNS Handbook 310 has been consistently available on the FNS public website since 2003 and on the USDA Partner Web since 2008. The Partner Web is a web-based SharePoint site accessible with Federal e-authentication. The FNS Handbook 310 does not detract from the legal or practical attributes of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> since it does not introduce new program requirements, but rather details operational procedures for the QC review process to evaluate compliance with existing SNAP laws and regulations. Publishing the entire FNS Handbook 310 in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> is impractical due not only due to its extensive 300-page length, but also for readability. The <E T="04">Federal Register</E> is limited to strict formatting capabilities and a procedural manual requires examples using bullets, indentions, text boxes, side by side comparisons, as well as flow charts, etc. and many times on the same pages as one another, which is why incorporation by reference is most appropriate. The Department also proposes to remove reference to the FNS Handbook 311 until it can be incorporated by reference. The Department proposes to reserve new paragraphs (e) and (f)(2) in anticipation of incorporating FNS Handbook 311 in the future. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Procedural Matters</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Order 12866, 13563, and 14094</HD> Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14094 direct agencies to assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory appr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━