Time’s up, J.B.!
Four months of failure in handling unemployment claims is enough
My first reaction was a quiet, “Hmmm.” I was on furlough earlier this month — all union members in the Tribune newsroom are taking three unpaid weeks this summer due to the pandemic-related downturn in our industry — and had just hit an electronic wall when applying for unemployment benefits at the Illinois Department of Employment Security website.
“An error has occurred while attempting to process your unemployment insurance service request,” said the on-screen message.
Odd, because my first request, in June, had gone through smoothly and I was simply updating and recertifying my claim.
What error? Most online forms and applications are good at flagging mistakes and omissions so you can correct them — highlighting them in red, for example, or posting an alert along the lines of “you must enter a valid ZIP code.”
Not at IDES! At IDES you can’t even backtrack to try to try to figure out the problem. “For security purposes,” the onscreen message continued, “you have been logged out.”
“Ugh!” I said.
The site invited me to log back in and try the whole thing again, or to call the tollfree hotline for guidance.
I called the number and worked my way through a five-step options tree. A recorded voice told me that the system was experiencing very high call volumes and to try back later. Click!
My next reaction was considerably louder and more colorful. I tried several more times throughout the day with the same result.
I had the luxury of giving up for the time being. We’ve saved. Our kids are through college. Our cars are paid for. But I found myself wondering about people in far tougher circumstances, people who’ve been fully laid off during this crisis who need that check to come through to buy food, pay rent, make credit card payments and so on. How are they dealing with this opaque, balky website and the infuriatingly unresponsive help line?
In mid-April, I thought Illinois Republicans were being churlish and opportunistic when GOP House leaders held a video news conference to blast Gov. J.B. Pritzker for the raft of problems Illinois residents were experiencing filing unemployment claims. We were just a month into the worst public health crisis in a century, an unforeseen calamity that had caused the rapid loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and caused a twelvefold increase in unemployment claims over the same period in 2019!
The system was neither built nor staffed to handle such a surge, and Pritzker was not only well aware of the problem, he spoke frequently of measures he was taking to address it during his daily news conferences. Upgrades. New hires. Retirees called back into service. Chat bots. Help from third-party vendors. Give him time!
“We hired outside contractors, they built an entirely new system,” Pritzker said at his May 7 news conference. “That system has a much higher capability than the existing systems that IDES has for unemployment, and so I believe that it will be able to handle the unemployment claims that come in.”
Complaints continued to pour in. On May 26, state Rep. Allen Skillicorn, R-East Dundee, announced an effort to recall Pritzker based on the continued poor administration of unemployment benefits. “This is his one and only job, is to get this website working and help the people of Illinois,” Skillicorn told Decatur television station WAND. “He can’t fix the darned website.”
“One and only job” vastly understated the multiple challenges Pritzker was facing as he addressed the cascading calamities of the coronavirus. But the Tribune Editorial Board made a good point the following day, writing “it’s been more than nine weeks since Pritzker’s first stay-at-home order came into force March 21. That’s ample time to ensure unemployment benefits applicants get their questions promptly answered and their applications processed when they turn to the IDES.”
That editorial was nearly seven weeks ago. Since then, 57 House Democrats signed a letter to IDES noting the continual and voluminous complaints from constituents who say they’re “unable to complete the filing of their claims, process their applications and often, even make contact with someone from (IDES) despite days and weeks of trying.”
One of my colleagues posted to Twitter an image reflecting 90 fruitless calls to the agency in one day. Another, who told me she’d made a similar number of attempts without success, said she’s decided she’d rather go without the money than continue banging her head on the bureaucratic wall. And, again, it’s a privilege to be able to make such a decision and to look at this problem from a certain emotional and practical distance.
The concern here is not for veteran journalists who may have to dip into savings to pay their cable bills, but for those who have been living paycheck to paycheck and find themselves having to navigate a confusing, unfriendly website — if they even have access to a computer — that has a tendency to dump them into telephone hell. It’s a concern for the businesses who rely on their customers getting money to tide them over.
Pritzker’s press secretary Jordan Abudayyeh told me in a statement that IDES is one of the agencies that was “hollowed over years as Illinois was held hostage during an ideological budget impasse” under Pritzker’s predecessor. The governor “is committed to rebuilding state government so Illinoisans have access to the critical services, but that rebuilding takes time. … The unemployment systems in every state in the U.S. are outdated and overwhelmed and Illinois is no exception (and) IDES staff is working overtime and the administration continues to seek out new solutions to this intractable problem.”
Thursday, IDES announced the implementation of a new “callback” system in which applicant can leave a contact number with the agency instead of trying multiple times to get through. That number is entered into a queue and the operator then calls the applicant. Supposedly. When I tried it Friday morning all I got was a recording saying, “I’m sorry we are experiencing difficulties. Please call back at a later time. Goodbye.”
What sort of difficulties? Oh, never mind.
Also Thursday, Pritzker announced the appointment of a new director for IDES to replace the current interim director. She is Kristin Richards, a veteran administrator in Springfield who has served as chief of staff for Senate presidents John Cullerton and Don Harmon.
My reaction, as I head off to another week of furlough, is a weary “good luck!”
Re-tweets
The winner of this week’s reader poll to select the funniest tweet was “I think the biggest mistake we made is telling Americans that wearing masks is to protect other people. Know your audience!” by @JenniKonner.
Last week I posted a lengthy selection of the best tweets of the pandemic. You can find it and other past columns at chicago tribune.com/zorn where you can also read all of this week’s finalists. For an early alert when each new poll is posted, sign up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/newsletters.