One year later: Florida’s jobless system still plagued with problems.
With backlog gone, claimants still struggling
TALLAHASSEE — First came inquiries about business loans. Then requests for unemployment information. Next, pleas from business owners. By the time a flood of Floridians sought help, even getting a phone call answered for a jobless benefit claim the state’s rickety system was already being overrun.
The Orlando Sentinel obtained emails to and from Ken Lawson, executive director of the Department of Economic Opportunity, during the first two weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic’s first effects in Florida in March 2020.
They show his agency scrambling to help newly jobless Floridians, being inundated with new unemployment claims and fielding calls for help from business owners, residents and elected officials.
“In truth, we will not survive the closure of our restaurants without immediate and decisive action from our government,” read one of the emails that came to Lawson’s attention the afternoon of March 16, 2020, five days after the NBA shut down, spurring the cancellation of most sporting events and the beginning of the coronavirus’ upending of much of life in the U.S.
It was from Josh Martino,
president of Bono’s Bar-B-Q and Willie Jewell’s Old School Bar-B-Q, a Jacksonville-based restaurant chain with 35 franchises. He was worried what the virus would do to his business and his employees.
“We were terrified as to what was going to happen. Stores were
closing, businesses were being forced to shut down,” Martino said in an interview.
In most of the emails, Lawson directs staffers to handle the issue, or makes sure briefings and meetings are set up to address the
brewing crisis, but says little himself about how DEO would handle the onslaught of claims.
“Whether before or during this COVID-19 event, DEO provides these (unemployment benefits) to those individuals who lost their jobs at no fault of their own,” Lawson wrote to Diane Moulton, DeSantis’ executive staff director, on March 16, 2020.
“At this time, DEO is preparing a strategy to perform these services during the various stages of the COVID-19 crisis,” he added.
That week, DEO would record more than 25,000 initial claims, more than the peak of weekly claims during the Great Recession, and a jump from less than 5,000 the previous week. DEO would quickly fall behind, processing just 4% of the 850,000 claims it received in the first month of the crisis. A backlog of more than 1 million claims piled up as people who were forced out of work as the economy ground to a halt searched for the traditional safety net of jobless benefits.
One month into the pandemic DeSantis sidelined Lawson and brought in the head of another agency, Jonathan Satter, to cut through the red tape and get checks sent out. Lawson later resigned on Sept. 1.
More than a year later, the backlog has been worked through and billions have been doled out by DEO, thanks to federal support. After Congress passed the CARES Act, $600 per week in federal benefits became available to claimants, and DEO began to catch up.
As of Wednesday, DEO has paid out nearly $24.7 billion in benefits, but only $5 billion of that has come from the state.
Still having issues
But problems remain for claimants.
Those seeking benefits are often closed out of the system because they’ve mistaken as having reentered the workforce. Some who did get a new job found it hard to stop the checks from coming and then found it difficult to repay any overpayments.
Lawmakers are looking at junking the CONNECT system, which has been blamed for much of the problems in processing claims and moving to a cloud-based system that can more nimbly handle issues that arise.
But Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, who has helped thousands of residents with their claims during the pandemic, wants to see an overhaul of the entire program, not just an upgrade to the computer system. She’s filed a bill to boost weekly benefits up from a maximum $275 per week, one of the lowest in the nation, to $500, increase the number of maximum state-paid weeks to 26 and install more oversight.
A Senate committee on Monday will consider an increase in benefits to $375 per week, part of a plan put forward by Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, but the House has been resistant to talk of hiking benefits, and the broader reforms pushed by Eskamani haven’t received a hearing.
Even without those changes in the law, Eskamani wants to shift DEO’s focus on preventing fraud, which has snagged many legitimate claims while still allowing some fraudulent claims to be paid. The focus, she said, should be to get checks to the jobless.
The Tampa Bay Times reported DEO has been flagging claims of pregnant women, people without reliable transportation and other factors that would prevent people from “being available to work,” one of the requirements for receiving state benefits.
“The lack of customer service has been a major issue of concern for all of us and it’s led to lawmakers like myself having to fill in that gap because people would call and just get nothing back in return,” Eskamani said. “We don’t need more call center staff that can’t help, we need more full-time staff that can actually process claims, answer questions, get these holds off your account and be of some assistance to folks.”
Another delay for some receiving benefits came this month as Congress passed the latest COVID-19 relief package and it was signed into law on March 11, three days before federal benefits were due to expire. The benefits were extended to September, but some have seen delays anyway. But an update issued Tuesday by DEO stated those receiving federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits should start to see more available weeks starting this week.
‘Shamefully slow’
Martino is upbeat about his business and the future, despite the struggles of the past year. He credits DeSantis for reopening quickly, the federal Paycheck Protection Program for helping keep people on payroll, and his customers’ generous tips for helping him and his workers through the last year.
“How fortunate are we to live in Florida? ... we were able to be open consistently,” Martino said. “We didn’t have the same experience as those in cold weather climates, those people where the population density is a lot, lot stronger . . . we’re super spread out anyway, so we do have a false sense of what it’s like out in the rest of the country, I think that’s probably fair to say. But … we’re very lucky to live where we live, and I think our businesses have reflected that. We haven’t suffered as badly as others. I know there are those that have.”
His one critique of the state’s handling of the pandemic, though, is the jobless system, which was “shamefully slow.”
“We had people who made several attempts — and I mean dozens of attempts — got pretty far and the system would just spit them out and kick them out,” Martino said.