Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), a likely 2028 contender, faces a new taxpayer problem, and it comes with a price tag that could reach nearly $700 million.
Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball rolled out a Public Benefit Error Rate Tracker on Tuesday, estimating year-to-date waste from errors by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) between $471 million and $692 million. The office tracks mistakes made while CHFS processes benefits including Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicare assistance, cash assistance, and child care. The numbers use federally mandated calculations that Ball’s office says the Beshear administration also uses and approves internally.
So these are not numbers Ball cooked up using some Republican accounting method. They come from the same methodology Kentucky uses to track its own programs.
Ball’s tracker estimates $200 million to $370 million in errors in the regular Medicaid program. Long-Term Care Medicaid, which covers elderly Kentuckians and people with disabilities, has a 43.24 percent error rate. Ball’s office puts the waste there at another $148 million to $173 million. Forty-three percent is not a rounding error. The Medicare Savings Program adds another $19 million to $23 million.
SNAP presents another problem for Beshear’s administration.
CHFS committed an error in 87.3 percent of SNAP cases processed, according to the tracker. Ball’s office estimates errors in benefit issuance are costing taxpayers between $95 million and $113 million. The federal number that could cost Kentucky even more is the state’s 7.52 percent SNAP payment error rate.
At 7.52 percent, Kentucky is in the range that carries an estimated $60 million penalty. If the error rate reaches 8 percent, the penalty rises to roughly $120 million. At 10 percent, taxpayers face about $180 million.
Beshear’s administration knew where the federal line was. In a 2026 fiscal note, his office estimated that a SNAP error rate above 6 percent could cost Kentucky between $63 million and $188 million in state benefit cost-sharing.
Ball put it plainly when her office released the tracker:
“The current total estimated waste resulting from CHFS’s errors is between $471 million and $692 million. High error rates harm the Kentuckians who rely on these programs and endanger Kentucky's federal funding.”
OJ Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, in an email to RedState, was less diplomatic:
"While Governor Beshear plays political games and refuses to take taxpayer waste and fraud seriously, Auditor Ball is standing up for all Kentucky taxpayers, especially those who truly rely on these programs and will be hurt most if the Governor doesn't change course immediately."
The public will not have to wait for the next audit to see whether those numbers improve. Ball’s tracker updates error rates monthly, with totals calculated year to date.
Ball warned Beshear about the problem on Aug. 13, pointing him to the Trump administration’s new enforcement push at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Her letter warned that failing to clean up problems identified by auditors could put Kentucky’s federal funding at risk.
By Sept. 22, Ball said the administration still had not responded. Her newest letter says there was “No acknowledgement. No corrective action plan.” She also wrote that Kentucky’s handling of SNAP had gotten worse, putting the state at risk of a roughly $60 million penalty.
The federal pressure behind Ball's warning is already in place. HHS launched its Audit Enforcement and Risk Oversight initiative in May, with remedies for unresolved audit problems, including withheld payments, disallowed costs, suspended or terminated awards, and withheld future federal funding.
HHS Chief Financial Officer Gustav Chiarello summed up the federal government's position this way: "Taxpayers deserve to know that their dollars are being spent as intended."
Ball's $692 million figure is an estimate of waste tied to processing errors, not an allegation that CHFS employees or benefit recipients stole the money. The distinction is important. The dollars are still gone when the state processes a case incorrectly.
Washington's crackdown on waste and mismanagement just found a very concrete test case in Frankfort, and the man at the center of it is eyeing the White House.
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