Advocacy Update from Arizona Food Bank Network
March 20, 2026. The Inside Scoop is a monthly Hunger Advocacy newsletter by Jessica Herbert of the Arizona Food Bank Network. Ms. Herbert addressed our group at Lutheran Day at the Legislature.
2026 Legislative Update
As you may recall from our last newsletter, Governor Hobbs had taken action on five bills aimed at SNAP, ultimately vetoing the legislation in favor of keeping the program accessible to low-income and working families. Those bills are back due to a floor amendment attached to the Department of Economic Security’s funding for the next four years.
Take Action:
This month we are highlighting HB2728, which started as the standard four-year review and appropriation of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, but is now an omnibus package of nine different bills Governor Hobbs already vetoed that are all directed at making assistance programs less accessible. Since many of the provisions amended onto HB2728 are already required of the state (for example, specific eligibility verifications for SNAP and other public benefits), the impact of this bill would primarily result in additional costs to Arizona and families losing their SNAP eligibility, as well as the possible loss of access to other important public assistance programs.
When households are found noncompliant, the entire household loses benefits. In Arizona, 70 percent of SNAP participants are children, seniors, or individuals living with disabilities. HB2728 puts nutrition assistance at risk for Arizonans already struggling to put food on the table for themselves and their families.
While we can appreciate legislators’ focus on lowering the payment error rate for SNAP, this bill will only pull resources away from those efforts. By creating duplicative requirements, since the federal requirements are already in place, HB2728 will drain the state of financial resources and internal capacity, all while DES is already reaching fewer Arizonans in need.
Please sign on through the Request to Speak system or contact your state senator in respectful opposition to the Bliss Amendment added to HB2728.
An Update on our “Update from Here” Newsletter:
For the folks that cross-participate in our newsletters, you may have already read about the changes to BBCE in February and the quick reversal to DES’s original policy at the beginning of March. Essentially, as an effort to adhere to the new payment error rate set, there was a shift in the “Expanded Categorical Eligibility Standard,” which has a different Federal Poverty Level (FPL) than the standard “Gross Monthly Income Eligibility Standard” requirements for SNAP. As Terri mentioned in her newsletter last week, DES has reinstated the 185% FPL income threshold for SNAP, which is a way that states across the country support working families whose incomes are insufficient or unstable and therefore not enough to consistently feed themselves and their families.
This is a part of a larger conversation we addressed in our Food Policy 301 webinar: When federal changes happen like H.R. 1 and states are given little to no runway to implement, crises are bound to occur. H.R. 1 acted like a “reset button” and some of the provisional changes were more intense than what we saw in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. You can find a link to the slides here, and we’ll put the link to the webinar recording and password below. It’s about a 40-minute watch.
Food Policy 301: State Legislature + H.R. 1
Passcode: MP#zH16Q