Lawmakers seek independent federal probe of Florida’s troubled unemployment system.

A group of Florida members of Congress is seeking an independent, federal examination of the mess surrounding the state’s unemployment claims system, which has been overwhelmed for weeks by the tens of thousands of people thrown out of work by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter they sent Friday, the 13 Democrats in Florida’s congressional delegation are seeking a Government Accountability Office review of what went wrong and what reforms are necessary to fix the system.

Unemployment systems in many states were overwhelmed by the surge of claims as large swaths of the economy shut down in March and April. Florida’s system still hasn’t caught up, though Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said the backlog is being processed and money is going out to those who are unemployed.

“Florida is a prominent example of a state that has experienced significant trouble with its unemployment programs throughout this public health emergency,” the members of Congress said in the letter, which originated with U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward/MiamiDade county Democrat. “For many Americans, any delay in the processing or receipt of benefits during unemployment can lead to financial disaster.”

They said Florida has the worst rate of paying claims in the country.

During a virtual news conference organized Friday by U.S. Rep Ted Deutch, several congressional members pounded DeSantis and the state Department of Economic Opportunity, the agency responsible for processing unemployment claims, for failing to deliver all of the benefits due to hundreds of thousands of people. Many haven’t been paid since March 15, when businesses started laying off thousands as a preventive measure to help curb the coronavirus.

“The state is not processing these fast enough and we can’t tell what portion of the CARES Act has been paid,” said Deutch, referring to the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief law passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in late March. He said the agency has processed more than 1.4 million claims, “but only less than half of those claims have been paid.”

“Florida’s unemployment system is a complete disaster,” added Deutch, whose district includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties. “We have had no leadership from this governor.”

According to agency figures, more than $1.8 billion in state and federal benefits has been paid since March 15 to 711,896 people as of this past Wednesday.

In a Friday news conference in Jacksonville, when DeSantis was asked about the unpaid claims dating back to March, he said “nine times out of 10” people don’t complete their applications properly. If they furnish all of the information they’re supposed to, “99.9% of the time” those people are paid.

Under the federal act, the U.S. government supplements weekly state benefits with $600 a week, which is to be distributed by the states. But in order to get the money from Washington, laid-off or furloughed people need to file unemployment applications with their respective states.

Florida offers a maximum of $275 weekly, among the lowest in the nation. Theoretically, a jobless Floridian could receive up to $875 a week, but many people who have filed successful claims complain that the state and federal payments have arrived irregularly, in varying amounts or not at all.

Hundreds of thousands of people have unsuccessfully applied for benefits or did not get paid if they were approved. Many were stymied by technical problems and interminably busy phone lines when they sought to apply for benefits through the agency’s CONNECT online system.

In addition, time is working against many workers as the $600 federal payouts are scheduled to expire July 31.

Other members in the news conference included U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel, Alcee Hastings, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Donna Shalala and Frederica Wilson. They all said their offices have been overwhelmed with phone calls and emails from desperate constituents seeking help dealing with the state agency’s overwhelmed online application system.

“It was bad enough we had an embarrassingly stingy system designed not to work,” Frankel said. “And now it has become just plain cruelty not to get these benefits out to workers.”

The conference included two Broward County men — a laid-off limousine driver from Deerfield Beach and a furloughed 32-year-old worker from Pompano Beach — who said they’ve been unable to get any money from the state system since applying for help in March.

Jesse Tysgan, the Pompano Beach resident, said he is living with a brother who has tested positive for COVID-19 and is also unemployed. He said he has made no progress in getting help to unlock a claim he filed in late March. “I tried everything possible,” he said. “Anyone on the phone in Tallahassee just was powerless — there was nothing they can offer. There was no option for helping you to unlock the claim.”

As for their requested investigation, Wasserman Schultz said it would look at not only Florida’s system but those of other states, though the time frame would be pretty long — up to a year or more. She said the onus is on DeSantis to make good on promised improvements and that he should stop pointing the finger at Sen. Rick Scott, DeSantis’ predecessor who devised the flawed system.

She and Frankel said the pending Heroes Act would among other things extend federal payments such as the $600 weekly stipends to the unemployed. But again, the money isn’t worth much, they said, if the state can’t deliver it in a timely fashion to those who need it.

Problems with the state system existed before the coronavirus-related flood of claims, the letter states, and “the pandemic exacerbated these problems and added new challenges.”

The Government Accountability Office works for Congress. GAO reviews don’t happen quickly; it can take more than a year for the agency to investigate and develop a report of its findings.

The request for the review asks the GAO to examine how the U.S. Department of Labor can improve oversight of state systems and ensure smooth processing and payments. It also seeks to identify lessons and recommendations for states to make sure they can handle large increases in demand.

They also want to know if the states’ problems are a result of the large number of coronavirus-caused claims or existed before the pandemic.

In Florida, the unemployment system was overhauled under Scott, the former Florida governor who is now a member of the U.S. Senate. State and federal Democratic lawmakers have charged that Scott left behind a system that was ill-equipped to effectively process claims.

DeSantis, who inherited the system, has called the system a “jalopy” and a “clunker.” He said last week he was ordering the state’s chief inspector general to investigate the nearly $80 million system.

“All this money was spent on this system when it clearly did not have the capacity for anything above 3% to 4% unemployment, even a mild recession,” DeSantis said at a May 4 news conference in Tallahassee. “That’s not a good use of taxpayer money.”

Though both DeSantis and Scott are Republicans, they’re not political allies. All the signers of the letter to the GAO were Democrats; none of the Republicans in the Florida delegation signed it.