Legislature needs to probe state’s mass unemployment fraud

As residents of one of the highest taxed states in the nation, Californians have a right to expect the government they pay handsomely to provide the basic services their taxes fund.

We expect that when we lose our job, the money we paid in unemployment insurance will be available to sustain our families in a time of personal crisis. We expect that the state agency entrusted with this serious obligation will be able to handle our application for help. We expect that banks are a safe and secure place to keep our money, and that when we have money in an account at Bank of America, the money which belongs to us will not mysteriously disappear one day.

Regrettably, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, these expectations have been dashed for the most vulnerable Californians relying on Unemployment Insurance.

Since late March when California shut down businesses and schools to slow the spread of COVID-19, my staff has helped thousands of constituents who were unable to secure their unemployment insurance from an overwhelmed and backlogged Employment Development Department. EDD has blamed its computers, lack of staff and been given multiple opportunities for improvement, even halting claims processing for a two-week period for a system “reset.” All to no avail.

How could an agency in the state of California, the fifth-largest economy in the world and home to one of the greatest technological development centers in the world, Silicon Valley, be so unequal to the task at hand?

If that were not bad enough, in October, many of our constituents reported that their EDD debit cards distributed and managed by Bank of America were frozen. The Employment Development Department and Bank of America then proceeded to engage in a finger-pointing exercise. Meanwhile constituents were without money to pay rent and buy groceries for their families. This happened to an estimated 350,000 Californians.

Just days after this unfortunate news came out, further scandal surrounding the Employment Development Department was revealed when nine local district attorneys throughout California went public with evidence of mass fraud involving federal, state and county inmates who have scammed an estimated $2 billion in fraudulent Unemployment Insurance claims. The Employment Development Department has reached a new level of ineptitude when death row murderers are getting their Unemployment Insurance claims processed while hard-working Californians who are owed their benefits get denied.

Legislators and constituents alike deserve a full accounting of where California taxpayer money has gone. It is time for the Legislature to step in and hold immediate investigative hearings to determine what went wrong and ensure this never happens again. Additionally, legislation has been introduced I am proudly co-authoring that will correct several glaring faults in EDD’s system such as requiring cross-checking of Unemployment Insurance claims information with state and county correctional inmate data.

It is far past time the state partners with technological experts in Silicon Valley to create a new apparatus that restores trust and meets the state’s Unemployment Insurance obligations in a timely manner.