Understaffed agency facing record claims for Pa. unemployment

More than 830,000 Pennsylvanians filed for unemployment compensation over the past two weeks after at least temporarily losing their jobs due to the COVID-19 economic fallout.

That exponential increase, more than all of the cases filed in 2019, would be enough to overwhelm even a healthy agency. But due to the lousy governance virus that infected Pennsylvania’s Legislature long before the coronavirus pandemic, the process is under water.

Spotlight, a state government reporting project of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/Patriot News, detailed the problem.

The state government established a special fund in 2013 to ensure timely unemployment compensation payments, after the U.S. Department of Labor cited the state Department of Labor and Industry for poor service.

The fund expired in 2016, but when Gov. Tom Wolf proposed renewing it with $57.5 million, Republican majority leaders in the state Senate let it die without a vote.

The department responded by eliminating 500 positions and closing three service centers. Though the administration partially has restored the ranks, only one of those centers has reopened and staffing remains hundreds of positions short of where it was in 2016. The department announced Monday that it would add 100 positions, but even that will leave it short of the 2016 number. It has 183 claims examiners and 109 intake interviewers, 216 fewer staffers than it had four years ago.

Unemployment compensation is funded by mandatory contributions by employers and a tax on employees’ wages, making it especially galling that the Legislature has diminished the office. But it flows from a philosophy that the government is the problem, the “deep-state” baloney that some politicians hold as gospel.

Anti-government politicians often repeat a one-line joke: “I’m with the government and I’m here to help.” Well, not if they have their way.

Mixed mask messages

When the chips are down, you listen to the people who know what they are talking about.

The firefighters say this is the way out of the fire? Go that way. The police say get down during a bank robbery? Lie on the floor.

So what do you do when different experts are dueling over the best course of action?

Right now, the smartest voices on stopping infections are divided on whether people should use masks when they go out in public during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been saying masks are not only unnecessary for the public but counterproductive. What the agency does recommend is that anyone who is sick — particularly with covid-19 exposure or symptoms — wear them around others.

The Washington Post is reporting the CDC is reconsidering that recommendation, claiming that while it will still push that surgical and N95 masks be saved for medical personnel, maybe simple cloth masks wouldn’t be such a bad idea for everyday use by regular people.

But at the same time, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams has other thoughts. In multiple television appearances last week, he rejected that advice, saying the research doesn’t support claims that masks help.

Some of it seems to be driven by the shortage of those medical-grade masks, and that has to be a factor. The people who need the masks most are the ones who are standing right in front of sick people, breathing the same air as they test and treat people before they move on to the next patient. They are not only at great personal risk, but if not protected, they could be a conduit to pass the disease along.

But others fear relying on masks could threaten the social distancing that does seem to be slowing down the exponential increase of positive cases.

“There is a possibility that constructing homemade masks, or even to wear masks in public as a healthy person, can provide a false sense of security,” said Dr. Gavin Harris, a UPMC infectious disease physician and critical care fellow.

In Pennsylvania, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey has picked a side. He posted a video on Twitter calling on people to wear homemade face masks, tagging his message to join the existing #Masks4All movement.

The science may be out on whether masks help the general public. But as long as people continue to follow the rules for keeping distance and wash their hands generously, one has to wonder what they can hurt.