State mum on review of system

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered a state investigation into what went wrong with Florida’s $77 million unemployment compensation system. The following month, two top U.S. senators called for a federal probe into Florida’s “uniquely poor” handling of the millions of workers who lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Six months later, the state’s Chief Inspector General Me linda Miguel said an investigation is “open and active,” but she would not give any details about it. Andit’s unclear if a federal probe has begun.

Meanwhile, even as most businesses have reopened after stay-at-home orders were lifted, the need for unemployment payments has not wavered.

Joblessness in the state swelled to 7.6% in September, according to the most

recent numbers from the Department of Economic Opportunity, representing 770,000 people still out of work largely because of the coronavirus outbreak. From Disney World alone, which only recently started allowing 35% occupancy, about 18,000 workers are being laid off in December.

As of Wednesday, more than 41,000 people were waiting for the DEO to process their unemployment applications.

DeSantis on May 4 said he would be “directing the Inspector General to do an investigation into how the CONNECT system was paid for” and how the project ballooned from an initial estimated cost of $40 million. The state contracted with Deloitte Consulting in 2011 and the system launched in 2013.

“It’s one thing to not have a good system if you go on the cheap, but to pay that much money, and then all the problems we’ve had to dealwith, is a big problem,” DeSantis said.

When asked where the investigation stands, the governor’s spokesman Fred Piccolo said,“The only thing I know is we have an email that the (Inspector-General) is investigating.” He ignored multiple requests asking to see that email.

To access public documents related to the investigation, the Orlando Sentinel was told the request would involve 15,000 pages and to produce those would cost “a few thousand dollars.” Reporters from the Palm Beach Post were told getting the documents would cost $4,550. Piccolo ignored emails asking what kinds of documents were included.

He also would not answer questions about when the investigation was launched or when it was expected to conclude. He referred questions about the scope of the investigation to Miguel, who directed questions back to Piccolo.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, was frustrated lawmakers hadn’t been updated on the investigation and said it will be imperative to complete it before the legislative session starts in spring. Eskamani and several other Democrats earlier this year introduced a bill to reform unemployment, including increasing benefits to as much as $500 perweek for 26weeks and imposing a three-week deadline for the DEO to process applications.

“We’re talking about Floridians to this day who are suffering at the hands of a broken system. We need to know, was it the vendor’s responsibility, was it the DEO’s, was it the governor’s at the time, Rick Scott?” she said. “There’s bipartisan interest in understanding what went wrong.”

Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project who has studied Florida’s system, was skeptical an investigation would solve the persistent problems, pointing to audits in 2015, 2016 and 2016 that still need to be addressed.

“I think they know what should be fixed,” she said. “I am generally all for investigations, but if they aren’t transparent about what it is or what it will accomplish, it seems like a way to push off the outrage until people are back at work and have forgotten about it.”

Regarding the federal probe requested by Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Ron W yd en of Oregon, Ashley Schapitl, a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, for which Wyden is the ranking member, said she was not aware of a “Florida-specific investigation.”

However, she said the U.S. Labor Department’s Inspector General is auditing the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program nationwide, which Congress passed in March and allowed many workers ineligible for state benefits to collect federal aid.

Schumer and Wyden wrote to then-Inspector General Scott Dahl, who retired in June, to look into Florida’s “failure to process unemployment claims and deliver benefits in a timely fashion” and questioned if “its unemployment programs are being administered in accordance with guidelines established by the CARESAct.”

In mid-April, the start of the first wave of virus-related layoffs and furloughs, the DEO had managed to process only 4% of the 850,000 applications that had been submitted. There were whole days when the CONNECT system was completely inaccessible, having been built to only handle 5,000 people.

But even after spending $100 million to upgrade the system and add 2,000 more call center employees, tens of thousands of Floridians still struggled to file applications. Some people have still not received any payments.

“While all states have seen record increases in the number of its residents applying for unemployment, the state of Florida’s performance has proved uniquely poor in its abject inability to assist millions of Florida residents who have applied for and continue to await unemployment benefits,” Sc hume rand W yd en wrote.

They blamed inaction by DeSantis and Scott, who they said failed to fix the system even after multiple audits over the years found glitches. The most recent audit was completed a few months after DeSantis took office, but the governor said he never sawit.

Schumer and Wyden also blamed cuts made to Florida’s unemployment system in 2011 under Scott that they argued set the program up to fail. Those cuts reduced benefits from $7,150 over 26 weeks to $3,300 over 12 weeks and disqualified many part-time and self-employed workers, at the behest of groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Florida Restaurant& Lodging Association lobbying to lower businesses’ unemployment taxes. Today, Floridians can collect a meager $275 per week in state benefits, while businesses pay $50 per employee in unemployment taxes, the lowest in the country.