The Alaska Division of Public Assistance is set to rely on out-of-state contractors to process food assistance applications amid a yearslong staffing shortage, Department of Health officials have confirmed.

Under a longstanding federal statute, applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program must be reviewed by state employees. That is because “outsourcing functions of the SNAP intake and application process has resulted in more complex and cumbersome enrollment procedures,” federal officials wrote in 2009.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sept. 2 approved the state’s request to use existing contract staff, who until now operated a virtual call center for the Division of Public Assistance, to also conduct SNAP eligibility interviews and perform other tasks they were previously barred from doing.

Since 2022, Alaska has struggled with a persistent SNAP backlog that has left thousands of Alaskans waiting months for benefits that should be delivered in a matter of days or weeks. The backlog coincided with a roughly 20% cut to staffing at the Division of Public Assistance.

While the division has struggled to perform its assigned tasks, including determining eligibility for food, cash, heating and medical assistance, staffing at the division remains far below pre-2022 levels.

According to a report submitted to state and federal courts earlier this month, Alaska had a backlog of 3,067 SNAP applications as of August. That is far below the peak of a 15,000-case backlog in 2023, but despite ongoing court oversight, the pileup has not been cleared altogether, and thousands of Alaskans are waiting months for assistance.

The division has struggled to keep positions filled amid what union leaders say is inadequate pay that has not been sufficiently raised. The state had 192 filled eligibility technician posts as of August, up from 155 in March. Dozens of funded positions remain unfilled.

Since 2023, the Division of Public Assistance has relied on a contract with the Public Consulting Group, a Boston-based firm, to run a virtual call center that fields questions from Alaskans. As of last month, the call center was staffed by 128 workers who reside in the Lower 48.

Those same workers will be tasked with handling SNAP interviews that until now were handled exclusively by division staff.

Division of Public Assistance Director Deb Etheridge said in a July interview that her goal is to eventually end the division’s reliance on contracted workers altogether.

“There is no part of me that wants to continue that contract perpetually,” Etheridge said in July. “What I want is to be able to manage the work with state employees in the state of Alaska. That’s my goal, but I can’t stop that (contract) right now, because what we would see is a slide backward.”

In a statement on Sept. 5, Etheridge said the project “is a short-term bridge to compliance and faster service, not a shift toward employing more contractors.”

Under the draft plan, the state will begin by asking contract staff to review SNAP recertifications for elderly and disabled Alaskans. As of last month, only one in five recertification applications were approved on time, according to the court report. Eventually, contractor duties will be expanded to include recertifications for the entire SNAP caseload.

Nearly 70,000 Alaskans rely on SNAP for food assistance each year.

In a Sept. 2 letter from the federal government’s Acting Associate Administrator of SNAP Ronald Ward, Ward told state officials that he was waiving both federal statute and federal regulations to allow contracted staff to review SNAP applications.

“The distinctive geographic characteristics of Alaska have resulted in persistent difficulties with improving customer service, timeliness and payment accuracy,” Ward wrote.

The Food and Nutrition Service in the USDA “is approving this project as a temporary measure,” Ward wrote, for a period of five years from the time of implementation.

But the move could face opposition from the Alaska State Employees Association, a union representing the employees who have until now been exclusively tasked with overseeing SNAP eligibility determinations.

Under the union’s collective bargaining agreement, if the state seeks to outsource work to contractors it must first reach out to union leadership and conduct a feasibility study to “determine the potential costs and benefits that would result from contracting out the work in question.”

In 2023, after the state first pursued a contract with the Public Consulting Group for the call center, the union filed a grievance on behalf of impacted division workers, alleging that the state did follow the required steps to pursue the contract.

An arbitrator eventually found that the state violated the terms of the collective bargaining agreement and ordered the state to pay $4.2 million to division employees for lost earnings.

Heidi Drygas, executive director of the union, said there are several reasons why the state should rely on its own staff to determine eligibility for benefits, and the state has yet to indicate it has conducted a study proving otherwise.

“This would be taking away Alaskan jobs for out-of-state contractors,” said Drygas. “It will move money out of state.”