ATLANTA — New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows Georgia’s SNAP error rate remains one of the highest in the country.

The state’s error rate is 15.2%, according to the data.

Georgia Budget and Policy Institute Vice President Daniel Kanso says the state needs to make changes to avoid additional costs.

“If we keep that error rate as high as it is, we’ll also be in the highest cost-sharing threshold, 15% of all the program costs, or about half a billion dollars per year,” Kanso said.

New federal guidelines require states to lower their SNAP error rate to 6% in order to maintain current federal funding levels.

The Georgia Department of Human Services says it is “pursuing every available tool to improve accuracy and program integrity.”

Kanso says the potential cost increase would have a major impact on the agency’s budget.

“That is a huge amount of money, particularly when the agency’s entire budget is $1.2 billion,” Kanso said. “So, just for one program, we could see costs increase by almost 50%.”

Kanso says one solution is adding more workers and increasing pay for those handling SNAP cases.

“One of the most essential things is going to be to add case workers and to pay those case workers more,” he said.