Head of Florida’s balky unemployment website apologizes and vows to fix it
The man in charge of Florida’s broken unemployment website apologized Thursday for the fiasco and said the department is reverting to paper applications for people seeking relief.
“From my heart, I apologize for what you’re going through,” Florida Departof ment of Economic Opportunity Executive Director Ken Lawson said during a morning meeting on a teleconference app. “There’s a full commitment from me, personally and professionally, to get you the resources you need from my department.”
The department’s unemployment website is essentially broken, dogged by longstanding glitches and a crush of people thrown out
work because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawson said the office received 1.5 million calls in the last week, with a third of them coming from Floridians looking to reset their PIN numbers. The PINs are required to log in to the site.
“That’s one of the biggest problems I’m addressing immediately,” Lawson said.
On Sunday, the department signed a contract with a company to provide 250 additional call-takers just to handle PIN resets, Lawson said. To relieve stress from the state’s website, the department will also be issuing paper applications that people can mail in. Those applications are not yet available.
The department is hiring another company to scan the applications and enter them into the system, he said.
“I’ve got to be as creative as possible considering where we are,” Lawson said.
The Zoom meeting was attended by two Florida lawmakers. After viewers started cursing and playing music, the meeting was switched off and restarted.
“I apologize for the original call going a little haywire,” Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami, said afterward.
Lawson blamed a historic rise in unemployment claims on the website’s woes. Last week, a record 227,000 Floridians applied for unemployment, a figure that is likely a vast undercount considering how few people have been able to apply through the website.
“Every state is having this problem,” Lawson said.
He did not address, and was not asked about, why neither former Gov. Rick Scott nor current Gov. Ron DeSantis fixed longstanding website glitches and problems flagged by auditors in three separate reports as far back as 2015. The most recent audit was in 2019, just a few months after DeSantis took office.