Assembly authorizes EDD help
Underscoring how hard it is to reach the California agency responsible for unemployment benefits, the state Assembly authorized its 80 members to add two fulltime staff members dedicated to helping constituents communicate with the Employment Development Department, following a similar move by the state Senate a few months ago.
EDD has struggled to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs in the pandemic. Many thousands of them report on social media and elsewhere that they cannot reach the beleaguered agency, and their benefits were cut off or never started. The state auditor has issued scathing reports on EDD, and elected
officials have held hearings and proposed bills to reform it. The agency has hired thousands of workers to answer phones, but says that training them to handle complex cases takes months.
State senators and assembly members have already become one of the few ways that unemployed people can get through to EDD. Their offices universally say they already devote untold staff time to helping desperate constituents seek their benefits. The lawmakers’ offices have regular calls with EDD to bring up cases. Meanwhile, some unemployed people have resorted to hiring gobetweens to try to reach the agency.
Assembly officials confirmed that each Assembly office can hire two temporary workers to work on EDD cases for up to four months with salaries paid out of existing operating funds, a move first reported by the Sacramento Bee.
“EDD continues to be a challenge,” said Assembly Member David
Chiu, D San Francisco, in a statement. His office said the extra staff had been a big help. “Work is being done to reform the department and improve performance, but we still have a real backlog of Californians waiting to receive the benefits they are entitled to.”
EDD data shows its backlog of claims waiting more than 21 days for action now stands at 215,601.
“While we continue to coordinate with legislative offices to help them resolve issues they are hearing from their constituents, we are already often working on such claims with the information provided by claimants directly to EDD,” the agency said in an email, adding that it plans new automation features to help to resolve issues more quickly.
The agency received 3,025,060 calls for the week ended June 26, according to its data dashboard. Of those, 264,820 were from unique callers, who each called an average of 11.4 times. It answered 242,235 calls, meaning that more than 22,000 people, or 8.5% of unique callers, could not reach a live person.
But that was better than its performance in recent weeks. For the week ended June 19, a total of 33,315 unique callers did not get through to EDD. For the week ended June 12, it was 41,699, and for the week ended June 5, it was 68,880.
In the other chamber, the 40 Senate offices were authorized in February to hire an extra staffer dedicated to EDD work, said the office of Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, DSan Diego.
“We’re committed to helping our constituents navigate a whole host of issues caused by the pandemic, especially EDD benefits, which is why the Senate reallocated existing resources so that we could hire an additional staffer for every member’s office, specifically to help with COVID and unemployment issues,” Atkins said in a statement.
State Sen. Josh Becker, DMenlo Park, said the real gamechanger in interacting with EDD is that the agency now has dedicated a fulltime liaison to work with his office. Chiu’s office likewise said they now have a fulltime liaison at EDD. The agency did not respond to questions about whether it now has liaisons for each assembly member and senator.
“We’ve cleared almost 500 cases, but still have several hundred more out there,” Becker said. “Most of our district staff is already working on it, but it’s certainly helpful to get one more person.”
But overall, Becker said, lawmakers should not have had to step up to help Californians interact with a state agency. “Hopefully this won’t happen again,” he said. “We’re working to make sure EDD has the right technology, has enough representatives, and is training its reps more quickly.”