PHOENIX — The state agency responsible for confirming which Arizonans qualify for SNAP benefits reported dropping more than 3 million calls with potential beneficiaries during an 18-month period — as nearly half a million Arizonans who previously received food stamps were cut from the program.
States across the country have seen cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program since Republicans enacted new work requirements for the federal food program in July 2025. But studies show Arizona is an outlier, cutting roughly 55% of its SNAP beneficiaries year over year. That's far more than every other state.
Republican lawmakers have claimed the state's drastic decline in enrollment is a sign the system was rife with fraud.
"People who shouldn't have been on it in the first place,'' GOP state Sen. John Kavanagh said in April.
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But data reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture by the Arizona Department of Economic Security — obtained by KJZZ through a public records request — supports claims from applicants who said the state has made it nearly impossible to have their SNAP eligibility verified by DES.
DES's internal records show that of all calls FOR ELIGIBILITY INTERVIEWS to the agency between October 2024 and March 2026, only 13% resulted in a completed interview with applicants - that's nearly nine in 10 calls that were abandoned, dropped or otherwise incomplete.
The agency also reported itself at fault for dropping 3,087,293 calls in that same time period, due to "call center error'' and "lack of call center capacity.''
During that time, DES denied applications for 54.5% of applicants because they failed to complete required eligibility interviews within 30 days.
The same goes for Arizonans attempting to recertify their benefits - 53.7% were denied for failure to complete their interview.
That's according to DES's own accounting of its "on-demand'' interview process. The reporting is required by USDA for a waiver which allows the agency to process applicants over the phone, rather than through in-person appointments.
Arizona cut about 55% of its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries year over year. That's far more than every other state.
Arizonans like Adamary Olivas have told KJZZ that it's not for lack of trying. While waiting in line at St. Mary's Food Bank this summer, Olivas said daily calls to DES routinely went unanswered. Olivas is among hundreds of thousands of Arizonans who were forced by DES to complete their SNAP eligibility interviews over the phone.
Kelley Murphy is a policy director with the Arizona Early Childhood Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for Arizona children. She called the data "astonishing.''
"Families who are eligible who need help aren't getting it because the system probably for many reasons is creating a barrier to them and it isn't like, 'Wow, we've managed to move all these people out of hunger.' We didn't,'' Murphy said. "All we did was kick them out of the system we had in place to help them.''
DES has previously reported that most of its SNAP denials -- 60% of those denied between July 2025 and April 2026, for example -- have been because applicants failed to complete the interview process.
In recent years, those interviews have been conducted over the phone thanks to a federal waiver issued to Arizona by the USDA. Interviews previously were required to be conducted in person.
DES received an extension of that waiver on Oct. 2, 2024. The waiver requires the state to submit a report with details of how it's administering those phone interviews. KJZZ obtained a copy of the most recent report DES issued to the USDA, covering October 2024 through March 2026.
Details include more than 3 million dropped calls, as well as the average call wait time for an interview — 23 minutes on hold — and the average time it takes to complete an eligibility interview — over an hour and 13 minutes.
Officials at DES didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Joseph Palomino, director of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, said the data underscores the agency's previous claims that DES is understaffed and underfunded by the state.
"There are two problems converging on DES to drive the decline in SNAP participation. First, new provisions in H.R. 1 have added bureaucratic red tape, making it harder for families to get and keep the benefits they qualify for. Second, an already underfunded state agency — both in staffing and technology — is being asked to administer these changes while facing severe financial penalties if it falls short,'' Palomino said in an email.
The result, Palomino says, is cutting eligible people from SNAP.
"These declines are not evidence of waste, fraud or abuse. They show what happens when we fail to make adequate public investments,'' he said. "Whether it's administering a safety-net program like SNAP, maintaining our water infrastructure or funding our schools, underinvestment ultimately hurts Arizona families -- and it hurts Arizona's economy.''
Murphy says some of the blame for Arizona's steep decline in SNAP enrollment falls on Republicans in Congress for adding new requirements in the name of cutting waste, fraud and abuse.
But she said the DES data clearly shows fraud isn't the reason why so many Arizonans have lost benefits.
"You can't naturally make the assumption that we dropped all these people out of the system because they were fraudulently obtaining benefits,'' she added. "We dropped them out of the system because we made it harder to get the benefits.''
DES is only allowed to conduct SNAP eligibility interviews by phone thanks to a waiver the state received from the USDA.
When J. David Noble, chief of the federal modernization and integration branch of SNAP, extended Arizona's waiver in 2024, he expressed some concerns.
At the time, those included an average call wait time that exceeded 40 minutes; the number of dropped calls due to system outages and call center staff availability; and the number of applications and recertifications denied for failure to complete the phone interview.
"FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) would like to remind the State agency that the data is essential towards understanding the success of the State's operation of the waiver,'' Noble wrote on Oct. 2, 2024. "If the operation proves problematic, FNS may consider discontinuing the waiver.''
USDA approved the waiver for a four-year period, from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2028. Arizona's next interim report to the USDA is due in November 2027.
The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
