State is falling down on the job
It’s a cruel irony that the millions of Californians who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own must contend with state officials who can’t seem to do the jobs they still, for some reason, have. The state’s Employment Development Department, which is responsible for but perpetually unable to provide unemployment assistance in a competent or timely manner, is challenging the Department of Motor Vehicles for the title of California’s worst bureaucracy. On top of the fear and pain that accompany unemployment, the EDD piles no small measure of needless frustration and destitution.
Granted, the department has faced an extraordinary crush of more than 13 million unemployment claims in this pandemicinduced downturn. But it has proved itself so unequal to the task as to suggest a case of farreaching and longstanding dysfunction that was only aggravated by the crisis of the moment.
The department lurched back to work this week after freezing new claims for two weeks in an effort to reduce a backlog of about 1.6 million applications for assistance, which has left some unemployed Californians waiting for help from a fund we all pay into for just such an occasion. Officials said they were able to clear about a sixth of the unprocessed claims during this unscheduled vacation, but they weren’t expecting to finish the job until January. That’s unacceptable for people who have already been waiting at least three weeks and in many cases months.
The hiatus also allowed the department to launch a new automated system designed to verify claimants’ identities and speed processing of applications. EDD Director Sharon Hilliard said the system had been able to verify the identities of applicants for 64% of about 100,000 claims made since Thursday, well shy of the more than 90% it was expected to handle. Hilliard said fraud might account for some of the uncompleted claims but acknowledged that some of the shortfall could be due to hold times stretching to more than an hour Monday and discouraging legitimate applicants.
The department launched the new system in the course of slowly working its way through more than 100 recommendations of a “strike team” convened back in July by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has repeatedly reached for such task forces to grapple with difficult problems. More than any shortage of staff or technology, the team blamed the backlog on mismanagement.
Legislative critics such as Assemblyman David Chiu, DSan Francisco, have argued that the department needs more dramatic change than is taking place. Chiu has repeatedly noted the department’s penchant for imposing stringent security measures that stymie legitimate claimants but somehow fail to stop fraud.
The best that can be said for the administration at this point is that it appears to be trying to fix a broken department at perhaps the worst possible time to be doing so. But seven months into the crisis, the results remain halting and underwhelming. As long as this vital agency can’t competently do its job, the governor can’t be said to have done his.