Thousands left waiting for federal benefits
State says department is fixing tech concerns causing the problems
For thousands of out-of-work Floridians, the abrupt stop to their weekly $600 federal unemployment checks was a mystery. They had been approved for and been collecting Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation for weeks, on top of their state benefits, but around Memorial Day week, the checks inexplicably ceased.
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity hadn’t offered an explanation until this week.
Paige Landrum, press secretary for the DEO, said the department identified “technology concerns that may have prevented an individual from receiving their Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payment over the last few weeks” and said the department is correcting the issue. Affected workers should start receiving payments again in about five business days, Landrum said.
The glitch, the DEO said, was twofold. Some workers were mistakenly not issued federal payments for their “waiting week,” the weeklong period before applicants start receiving unemployment, a requirement that DeSantis waived after the pandemic hit. And some workers who had requested that their claims be backdated were excluded from recent payment files for the federal payments.
“We are working diligently to ensure these claimants are made whole as quickly as possible,” Landrum said via email. “The department anticipates having the issue resolved quickly and being able to provide these payments to eligible claimants.”
The problem appears to be widespread with state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, compiling a list of almost 8,500 people who have been affected. And there are likely many more.
“These are folks that are eligible, have been claiming their weeks and getting their benefits on a regular basis, and then the $600 suddenly stopped,” Eskamani said. “Meanwhile, folks have really suffered. Three weeks with no $600 payments is a big deal. That can be someone’s rent.”
In Florida, state benefits are capped at $275 a week, one of the lowest payouts in the country.
The DEO warned that federal benefits could be interrupted when Florida launched its tool for residents to collect retroactive pay, money they had not been able to access when the CONNECT system broke down during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jonathan Satter, secretary of the Department of Management Services, who was tapped by the governor to address Florida’s problems with its unemployment system, said during a discussion streamed live on Facebook that workers who backdated their applications prior to March 29, the date federal benefits began, might lose a portion of their FPUC pay. Only workers who weren’t able to apply between March 9 and April 8 could request to backdate their applications.
But it’s unclear if that’s why some workers stopped getting FPUC payments because many residents who had never collected retroactive pay also saw their federal payments halted.
“These generic answers don’t address nearly all of the problems and possibilities as to why we are not being paid. Neither of those apply to the thousands of people that have been active and eligible and paid like clockwork from the beginning and then poof it all stopped,” one user commented on Eskamani’s Facebook page.
“I did not backdate anything. It just stopped,” another person wrote.
Eskamani said it’s another instance in which Florida’s unemployment system has failed workers.
“DEO has to ping the federal government for the FPUC payments. It’s not that Florida has a separate trust fund for FPUC payments and they can easily tap into it. Their explanation seems to say that for some individuals, they forgot to do that,” Eskamani said.
It’s the latest problem to plague Florida’s broken unemployment system that has struggled to keep up with the millions of residents out of work and filing claims because of the virus and government-ordered shutdowns.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has blamed Deloitte Consulting,
the company hired in 2010 to build the CONNECT system, for the backlog of unpaid claims, and blamed residents for making errors on their applications that have made them ineligible for benefits.
DeSantis ordered a state investigation into the $77 million CONNECT system, and earlier this week two top-ranking U.S. senators called for a federal investigation into Florida’s “uniquely poor” handling of unemployment and the DEO’s “failure to process unemployment claims and deliver benefits in a timely fashion.”
The lag in disbursing federal payments in Florida comes as Congress is debating whether to extend the program beyond the end of July, when the program, which was created under the CARES act, is set to expire. U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the Trump Administration opposes an extension.
“We expect the economy to be deep into the process of reopening, with shutdown orders ended and millions of Americans freed to return to work,” Scalia said.
Republicans on the committee largely agreed and argued that continuing to offer $600 federal payments would discourage Americans from returning to work. Democrats shot down that argument and said with so many people still out of work — unemployment in Florida hit 12.9% in April and 16.2% in metro Orlando — the federal benefits are invaluable.
“If we let this benefit expire at the end of July, Mr. Secretary, I’d argue that we’re going to throw tens of millions of people who rely on them into a financial crisis family by family all across the United States of America,” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, told Scalia.
Florida Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, who spoke before the committee, said cutting off federal benefits could have devastating effects in Florida. He estimates Florida has distributed only half of the FPUC money owed to eligible workers.
“Florida entered this crisis with one of, if not the, least prepared unemployment systems,” Rodriguez said. “The CARES Act lifted my constituents when Florida’s system alone would not have. … CARES Act programs ought to remain in place until recovery has reached all sectors, otherwise communities like mine, I fear it will set us back in our path to recovery.”