BATON ROUGE — The number of Louisiana residents receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits dropped 22 percent in one year, and the state is also dealing with a higher error rate in how those benefits are paid out.

According to the Louisiana Department of Health, new work requirement rules led to 166,000 Louisiana residents losing their food stipends.

Taylor Chenevert is one of them. She was dropped from the program after five years, and says the loss hit hard.

"It is a big help when you're a mom of multiple and at the time I was a single mom," Chenevert said.

Advocates say household income in Louisiana hasn't changed, leaving people like Chenevert to make difficult choices.

"You've got to decide whether we want to pay this bill or buy food, because I don't want my kids to go hungry," Chenevert said.

Beyond the drop in recipients, there are also problems with how the state calculates benefit amounts.

The federal government tracks instances of states miscalculating SNAP benefits and requires them to repay a percentage.

"The error rate is simply if the agency gave the wrong amount of benefits to the recipient," said Tia Fields of Invest in Louisiana.

Louisiana's SNAP error rate is currently 8.14 percent, compared to the national average of 10.62 percent. Fields says any error rate above 6 percent puts a state in the category of owing money back to the federal government.

Even though Louisiana's rate is below the national average, Fields says it could still force the state to pay back $95 million to the federal government.

"We just have to work through some of these procedural barriers that arise with agency shifts and technology," Fields said.