Real Results, Real Stories: How New York Counties Are Using EVA to Transform Benefits Delivery

At the New York Public Welfare Association's (NYPWA) 2026 Winter Conference, TipCo moderated a panel session that didn't feel much like a typical conference presentation. There were real conversations, metrics, and effects on staff. Three New York county commissioners—Sarah Merrick of Onondaga County, Kira Pospesel of Greene County, and Don Horan of Allegany County—sat down to share exactly what it has looked like to bring AI into their agencies: the challenges, the process, the skeptics, and the results. 

Here's what they shared... 

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve 

All three commissioners came to EVA from a place of genuine urgency. Staffing shortages, rising caseloads, and increasing administrative demands had stretched their teams to the breaking point. 

Kira Pospesel described the situation in Greene County in stark terms. Facing a 27% vacancy rate and timeliness numbers that were deteriorating fast, public assistance determinations at 53%, SNAP at 59%, and late cases climbing, she knew she needed to act. "Every decision I made made my problems worse," she said. "I was causing more pain in my staff and everybody was working overtime." 

Sarah Merrick described a similar picture in Onondaga County, a large department of nearly 500 staff running a 10 to 12% vacancy rate since COVID, with their largest program, SNAP, under the most strain. Don Horan of Allegany County, newer to EVA and just a few months into implementation, described a familiar pattern: short-staffed, high turnover in the secretary pool, and a growing gap between the volume of client needs and the capacity to meet them. 

The question for all three wasn't whether to do something different. It was how to change things in a way that made sense for their agencies. 

The Implementation Process: Start Slow, Build Confidence 

A consistent theme across all three commissioners was the importance of taking a deliberate approach to implementation, utilizing a “crawl, walk, run” model. 

Kira signed her contract and then the county spent time preparing for EVA Phone to go live. "I needed to make sure that we were okay before I let it loose," she said. "Everyone thought the world was gonna implode." That time was spent building the right foundation, getting the phone system in order, loading EVA with county-specific information, and critically, getting her team on board. "The biggest issue that I had at the beginning is that the team needed to believe in it," she said. "That it wasn't against the team." 

Sarah echoed that approach. Onondaga started with a small group of senior supervisors, walking them through the technology and making the case that it was designed to give workers relief, not replace them. They launched EVA R&R for SNAP in January 2025 and built from there. Her advice to agencies considering this path was direct: "You better have your most senior and most knowledgeable staff on board because they're literally going to have to think about A to Z. You test, you circle back, you test again, and then you go live." 

Don, though earlier in the journey with EVA, described a similar process of building trust one step at a time, first bringing IT leadership into the room at the beginning of the process, then the county administrator, then the legislature, then the unions.

Bringing Stakeholders Along 

Union engagement was a topic that came up from the audience, and all three commissioners had a similar answer: there was far less pushback than expected. 

The reason, they agreed, came down to how the conversation was framed from the start. EVA was introduced not as a replacement for workers but as a tool to give them relief. "Our message was clear that it wasn't going to replace anyone," Don said. "We're not doing this to lay off staff. We made that really clear." Sarah noted that her union members were simply exhausted and looking for help. Kira put it plainly, "This does not replace staff. EVA is basically on the outside of these cases. The eligibility determination is still being done by the eligibility worker, the way it reads in the regulations." 

The Results 

The outcomes the commissioners shared were difficult to ignore. 

In Greene County, the turnaround was remarkable. After turning EVA on in August 2024, Kira watched her numbers climb rapidly. Public assistance determinations went from 53% to 95%. SNAP determinations went from 59% to 98%. Late cases, which had been running at 19% for public assistance and 24% for SNAP, dropped to 0% in both categories. The staff stopped working overtime. And Greene County's employment rate, which had sat at 3.8%, climbed to 42.4% by December, first in the state of New York. "I do not have more staff," Kira said. "We looked at it differently." 

In Onondaga County, Sarah shared that EVA R&R handled nearly 14,000 calls in 11 months, saving close to 1,400 hours of worker time. EVA Phone has answered approximately 30% of the roughly 200,000 calls that have come into their SNAP call center over the past eight months, the equivalent, Sarah noted, of two full-time workers. "You start calculating it and you start going, 'Ooh, that's like two workers working full time, nine to five, 52 weeks of the year.'" 

In Allegany County, Don's team, just weeks into go-live, saw EVA answer roughly 60% of calls in a three-day window. Within an hour of turning it off for a test, a senior staff member walked in and asked to turn it back on. 

What's Next 

All three counties are building on their early results and expanding what EVA does for their agencies. Sarah and Onondaga County are working with TipCo to explore new applications for EVA across a number of programs, hoping to save workers additional time throughout the day. Greene County has expanded EVA beyond DSS to the Veterans Department, Office for Aging, and Youth Bureau, after those departments saw the difference in DSS staff and wanted in too. 

As Kira shared, "The results for our county have been amazing." 

Interested in Learning More? 

If you're curious about what EVA could look like for your agency, we'd love to talk. Reach out to the TipCo team—we're happy to walk you through the process and share more about what agencies like yours are experiencing.