LOCAL: Florida is nearly up to date in paying eligible unemployed workers.

But about a half-million people have been ruled ineligible, governor says

Florida is nearly up to date in paying unemployed workers who are eligible for benefits, disbursing more than $2.6 billion to more than 975,000 people since mid-March, Gov. Ron DeSantis said in defense of the state’s overwhelmed unemployment system.

But figures he cited at a news conference in Tallahassee on Tuesday show about a half million people who applied over the past two months of the coronavirus-driven economic crisis have been ruled ineligible for benefits.

DeSantis said $2.659 billion has been paid to 975,656 workers out of more than 1.4 million people whose claims have been processed since March 15. DeSantis said 97.6% of the people who are eligible for benefits have been paid since March 15.

“You have 1.468 million total processed claims in the last two months, most in the last 6 to 8 weeks,” he said.

That means nearly a half million people whose claims have been processed are ineligible. The governor said some claims triggered holds by the agency for potential fraud, while others were rejected because people were earning money for work performed out of state.

“At the end of the day there are going to be a large amount of folks who are not eligible for whatever reason,” said Jonathan Satter, the head of the state’s Department of Management Services whom DeSantis recruited to fix the Department of Economic Opportunity’s sweeping problems with unemployment claims.

Satter acknowledged the agency still faces an uphill battle serving people trying to get through to the agency by phone. Before the pandemic crisis crushed the economy, the DEO had 40 people answering calls. Now it has 6,000. But many of those agents still are new to the job and undergoing training. And many calls last more than 90 minutes as agents try to work through people’s questions.

DeSantis reiterated a message he’s been refining since early this month: that the DEO, whose job it is to distribute state and federal funds to the unemployed, is revamping its system on the fly, paying millions to people who are eligible and rejecting claims from people who filed incomplete applications or who failed to meet various requirements under the law.

“We faced in Florida a prospect of an unprecedented surge in reemployment claims,” he said. “That was going to be a challenge under any circumstances.”

DeSantis’s presentation was a broader reprise of remarks he made on Monday, when the governor blamed the laid off workers for filing incomplete or inaccurate applications that made them ineligible for benefits.

But last week, Democratic members of South Florida’s congressional delegation assailed DeSantis’s performance and the agency after receiving what they called a steady flow of desperate pleas for help from unemployed constituents who live in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. During a virtual new conference, they called for an investigation of the agency’s record by the General Accounting Office.

According to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data, nearly 7 of every 8 Floridians who managed to file claims during the three weeks from mid-March until early April were waiting to have them processed. It was the worst rate in the country.

DeSantis himself has called for an investigation of the system, but his focus is different from what the Democrats have in mind. In early May, he directed the state inspector general’s office to look into the $77 million the state spent on a system that quickly found itself ill-equipped to handle the massive volume of claims triggered by the pandemic.

Regardless of blame, lawmakers, advocates for the unemployed and large numbers of laid off and furloughed workers themselves say they are running out of time to collect benefits before key household bills become past due and bank accounts run dry.

To help protect those who are running out of money, DeSantis has imposed and then extended moratoriums on evictions by landlords and banks. But the slow flow of money into many households has still forced thousands of families into food lines organized by nonprofit organizations.