Florida’s unemployment system was designed to fail

As a lifetime public servant, I cannot tell you how much it has pained me these last few weeks to read email after email detailing the anxiety, stress and uncertainty of my constituents.

These emails have included cries for help from single mothers, stories of combat veterans selling plasma, teachers who worked second full-time jobs as waiters in shut-down restaurants, musicians deemed ineligible for help because they had not worked full-time, and tales from the only recently employed, now back down on their luck after months of struggle. I want the people of House District 44 and Florida to know, I hear you and I’m here for you. My office is continuing to respond to the multitudes of emails and phone calls we’ve received and we are doing whatever is within our power to help those in need.

In 2011, I knew that this system was designed to fail and that’s why I voted against it. As it has been reported since, then-governor Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, and the Florida GOP created this system to put profit over people and present artificially low state unemployment numbers. He also wanted to have businesses pay the lowest unemployment insurance rates in the nation.

Put simply, this system, which was supposed to be designed to assist Floridians in need, was designed to fail those who especially needed the help. According to the Census Bureau, the median rent in Florida is $1,128. Is $275 a week really supposed to keep a single mother and her family with a roof over their head or food on their table? How is the seasonal or gig worker to meet his or her obligations without a safety net in times of disaster? How many people will be able to find reemployment within a mere twelve weeks?

Certainly, we did not foresee COVID-19 in 2011, but we had weathered 9/11, oil spills on our coasts, tornadoes, and a

HOME DELIVERY

RATES myriad of hurricanes that have previously shuttered businesses and left workers without paychecks. The CONNECT system had failed the unemployed back then and it continues to fail them today.

It’s patently unfair for working Floridians to bear the burdens of past missteps. While I’m glad that Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared that there will be an investigation into this criminally poor performance of the unemployment website which came with a price tag of $77 million, I say that this has been too little, too late for far too many Floridians.

I was proud to join the voices of many of my colleagues who called for a special legislative session to be held so that we could address the many economic and public health issues facing Florida. Too many Floridians are suffering for us to sit idly on our hands. I am genuinely appalled that the call for a special session failed along partisan lines and that the GOP-led Legislature abdicated its solemn responsibility and abandoned millions of Floridians in need. We should have been able to put partisanship aside to do what we all know is right. Let me be unequivocal: We must fix this broken system and hold those who knowingly made it this way accountable for their actions.

Furthermore, we need to increase the weekly payments to an amount that will better assist Florida families, extend the number of weeks they can receive these payments, and extend mortgage and rent forbearance and continue to prohibit evictions during this emergency.

Finally, we should examine how we can improve our state-wide public health apparatus especially in relationship to the most vulnerable among us.

Together we will get through this crisis as America has gotten through many in her history. My hope is that leaders will learn hard lessons from this situation and that we will use this crisis as an opportunity to truly make Florida a better place with a brighter future.