BOSTON (SHNS) - Low-income families robbed of their grocery funds are no longer getting reimbursed by the federal government, and some Bay Staters are now looking to the state government to replace their stolen benefits. Skimming scams targeting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit recipients spiked in Massachusetts and across the U.S. in the summer of 2022. Crime rings install skimming devices on point of sale devices at ATMs and in grocery stores, which can steal information from electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which have less federal legal protections against theft than credit or debit cards. The federal government began reimbursing families who could prove their EBT dollars were swiped. As of September, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance had issued about $9 million in federally funded replacement benefits to about 20,100 Bay State households who were victims of SNAP theft. However, Congress had to renew the policy in December to continue reimbursing stolen benefits. With the reimbursement policy ending in December, a bipartisan bill was introduced to Congress that included an extension of the policy until 2028 -- but the omnibus bill ultimately collapsed, and the extension was cut, effectively ending the federal reimbursements of stolen benefits. "That brings us to where we're at now in Massachusetts -- and the most important thing is that families who are actively being stolen from in Massachusetts through no fault of their own aren't having their money replaced. So we're urging the governor and Legislature to make a plan to address that," said Victoria Negus, benefits policy advocate at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. Negus said MLRI has urged Gov. Maura Healey to include $5 million in a fiscal year 2025 supplemental budget, and to fill the reimbursement gap in fiscal year 2026. The Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers EBT cards, is iexploring the implementation of a new chip or tap pay system for the cards, which DTA expects in late 2025 or early 2026. The change will make the cards more secure, DTA says. Chip and tap technology is safer from skimming schemes. Healey will roll out her fiscal 2026 budget on Wednesday, and plans to file a fiscal 2025 supplemental budget in tandem. "For fiscal 2026, we're urging the governor and Legislature to just fill the gap between the start of the year and when the department will begin to do chip/tap cards. For fiscal 2025, we're talking about approximately $1 million a month -- it's not a huge dollar figure for the state, but for families who are stolen from, that investment is critical," Negus said. A spokesperson for Healey did not respond to a question Tuesday when asked if Healey would include the reimbursement dollars in her budget filing. Rep. Sally Kerans and Sen. Robyn Kennedy have also filed bills (HD 2802 / SD 1741) to require the state to replace stolen SNAP dollars when the federal government fails to do so. The bills say the state should "promptly replace the full amount of financial assistance or nutrition benefits stolen through electronic benefit transfer card skimming, card cloning or other fraudulent methods." Kerans and Kennedy both said they also estimated that the state would need to spend about $1 million to replace stolen dollars until DTA rolled out the new chip/tap cards. "It's critically important that we ensure that all Massachusetts families eat... while DTA addresses the root causes, and improves our systems to make it more difficult for theft to occur," Kennedy said. Kerans said she was hopeful that the policy would get sufficient support in the Legislature. "So much great work has gone on in the arena of food insecurity here, like the school lunch bill, people understand the very real need for these benefits," she said. "I do think people appreciate this in all districts, but may not be aware of the extent of the theft of these criminal operators." Massachusetts was selected to participate in a federal pilot with USDA for mobile/contactless pay for EBT cards in 2023. The state invested $2 million to implement the chip/tap system. The department will explore chip EBT cards with a new vendor in the next two years, as they're currently in the middle of a vendor transition.