Newly jobless can’t get benef its. Fix this mess!
Florida’s miserly unemployment compensation benefits, served up on a website that doesn’t work, have been a huge boil on our body politic for far too long. The coronovirus has at last made it impossible to ignore.
For the poorly compensated people who perform the myriad mundane chores that make life possible for the rest of us, the damage inflicted by the coronavirus cataclysm is — literally — incalculable.
We can’t calculate the exact numbers of workers affected — thanks to the absurdly named Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) and its absurdly named website, CONNECT.
Tens of thousands of laid-off Floridians have tried, for hours at a time and days on end, to CONNECT to this low-rent website. It’s gotten so bad that the department has posted paper applications on its website for people to print and mail in. That oughta be fun!
CONNECT was foisted upon us by then-Gov. Rick Scott at a cost of $77 million, including a $14 million cost overrun. In a process that passes for competitive bidding in Florida, the contract to design and build the system went to Deloitte Consulting. The company’s star lobbyist was Brian Ballard, the co-chair of Scott’s inaugural finance committee.
STATS SUPPRESSED?
From the beginning, ghosts in the machine locked thousands of unemployed workers out of the system and delayed desperately needed payments — for weeks. An unnamed adviser to Gov. DeSantis, interviewed by Politico, alleges that Scott deliberately sought to install a system so cumbersome that it would discourage unemployed Floridians from seeking funds.
It was a great way to keep Florida’s unemployment stats down, the adviser said. The system also would have been an effective way to save businesses millions in unemployment taxes. If that was Scott’s intent, then it was a reprehensible way for the state’s top public servant to treat people who had a right to the funds in order to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads.
Harder to dispute are U.S. Department of Labor statistics that show that in the year before CONNECT launched, Florida paid 78 percent of initial claims within two to three weeks. By 2014, however, the claims that Florida paid on time had fallen to 48 percent, last in the nation in terms of timeliness.
Since then, state auditors repeatedly have documented the disconnects — pun definitely intended — in the CONNECT website. The audits gathered dust on the desks of a succession of DEO agency heads, including
Jesse Pannucio and Cissy Proctor, who have gone on to bigger and better-paying things, leaving this creaky, constipated mess behind for DeSantis, Scott’s successor and sparring partner in the daily battle for President Trump’s favor.
DeSantis did nothing to address the collapsing computers at DEO, and why would he? Florida’s dishwashers, dog walkers, day laborers and Disney cast members are too strapped to pay for lobbyists.
BENEFITS TOO LOW
Then, too, there’s the matter of HB 7005, an odious piece of legislation that Scott enthusiastically signed into law in 2011. The bill capped unemployment benefits at $275 a week and reduced the duration of benefits from 26 weeks to a maximum of 12. According to FileUnemployment.org, Florida is almost at the bottom nationally in what it pays for unemployment insurance compensation. Only Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona and Mississippi pay less.
HB 7005 also imposed new and humiliating state scrutiny on an applicant’s efforts to find employment. Under Scott’s scheme, unemployed Floridians seeking benefits are required to prove that they are looking for a job to the satisfaction of a DEO equivalent of probation officers and helicopter parents.
It was, and remains, a highhanded, mean-spirited insult to working adults who need a job, not a job-search nanny. And
Scott was still at it late last month. Florida’s junior U.S. senator balked at the stimulus bill’s $600 per week increase in unemployment benefits, on top of state benefits. He actually, and arrogantly, believes that so much largess would tempt low-wage earners not to hunt for jobs after the COVID-19 crisis ends. Scott, who has flaunted his povertystricken upbringing in public housing, has resolutely eliminated empathy from his vocabulary.
Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez, who was serving in the House in 2011, voted for the bill that capped benefits. Ebenezer Scrooge would have liked it, too.
JUST FIX IT
There’s a push for DEO Secretary Ken Lawson to resign, but that would be too easy. Plus, doesn’t the buck stop a little higher up the ladder? Lawson is on an “I accept responsibility” tour, putting in long hours making excuses, making apologies, pleading for patience and soliciting online applications for additional workers to help out at the CONNECT helpline.
On Thursday, DeSantis issued an order suspending rent evictions and foreclosures for 45 days, a move we can applaud. We’ve also noted here that DeSantis made a decent start by eliminating the requirement that people seeking unemployment benefits must actively be looking for a job. But that won’t buy groceries or pay rent for Florida’s newly unemployed. Since then, he also has temporarily suspended a requirement that workers wait a week before they can collect their first unemployment check, which will be of great help.
It isn’t just the newly jobless who must navigate CONNECT; recent federal legislation will help gig workers — euphemistically referred to as independent contractors — also get benefits. But they will run into the same defective website if it’s not overhauled.
“We’re all in this together” rings hollow from the lips of lawmakers with a well-documented history of abuse, neglect and disrespect for the millions of low-wage workers upon whose backs Florida’s economy is built. The vast majority of men and women trying to CONNECT have worked hard, holding their heads high — but barely above water. They have earned the dignity of a simple and respectful unemployment claims system.
Florida’s public schools have produced tech wizards like Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg. Surely the governor can insist that the DEO find someone, somewhere, to design a website that works. But given DeSantis’ sluggish handling of the coronavirius crisis so far, the question remains: Will he?