DeSantis orders probe of Florida’s troubled system for jobless claims

Thousands left waiting for benefits amid virus crisis

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday he will order the chief inspector general to investigate how Florida paid nearly $80 million to build an unemployment claims system only to see it overwhelmed by thousands of jobless workers thrown out of work amid the coranavirus pandemic.

More than 1.7 million applications have been filed since mid-March, although the state says some of those are duplicates. More than 1 million have been confirmed, the state said Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of people unsuccessfully applied for benefits or did not get paid if they were approved. Many were stymied by technical problems and interminably busy phone lines when they sought to apply for benefits through the agency’s CONNECT online system.

“All this money was spent on this system when it clearly did not have the capacity for anything above 3% to 4% unemployment, even a mild recession,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee. “That’s not a good use of taxpayer money.”

The investigation will delve into contracts awarded to create the $77 million system under former Gov. Rick Scott in 2011. The system is operated by the state Department of Economic Opportunity.

In various public forums, the governor called the system a “jalopy” and a clunker.” He summoned Jonathan Satter, head of the Florida Department of Management Services, the business arm of state government, to fix the system with an emphasis on ratcheting up payments to people who waited weeks to get their first $275 unemployment check.

“People want an accounting,” DeSantis said Monday.

As the agency struggled to field claims and make payments, the Republican governor indicated its leadership under director Ken Lawson did not immediately address the need for more staffers.

“There’s a lot of things that could have been done,” DeSantis told reporters Monday. “This system would have been very vulnerable to having a big uptick in applications.”

“What we think has happened is we received duplicate and possibly triplicate applications” as a result of paper applications the agency started to distribute to those who could not get through via the online CONNECT system, said Satter, who has been on the job for two weeks. He added that a number of applications were incomplete, with many lacking Social Security numbers and employment histories.

On Friday, Satter told a virtual town hall organized the Palm Beach County Business Development Board that his focus is on increasing the numbers of people who receive benefit checks. One of the governor’s chief complaints about the system was that he couldn’t learn how much in benefits had been paid during the crisis.

DeSantis said there are still roughly 200,000 in a queue awaiting processing.

But he said that over the next 10 to 14 days, “you should a really significant amount of payments going out.”

According to a DEO website scorecard, which was established after Satter came aboard, the state has paid $979 million in claims since March 15 to 478,666 people. But more than 61% of that money came from the federal government under the coronavirus relief act signed into law on March 27.

The state’s Democrats have heated up their criticisms of the shaky system, calling for an investigation of its management and the expansion of benefits.

On Monday, state Agriculture Secretary Nikki Fried wrote to Melinda Miguel, the state’s chief inspector general, to request an investigation into potential mismanagement of Florida’s unemployment claims system.

“The governor has not acted with the urgency or transparency that the situation necessitates,” wrote Fried, the first Democrat to hold one of Florida’s four statewide elected positions in eight years.

“As head of the state’s consumer protection agency, I make this request on behalf of the thousands of Floridians who have been unduly frustrated by their state government’s inability to timely process requests for unemployment assistance, for whom economic recovery depends on the competent government response they deserve,” Fried added.

What Fried wants investigated is not exactly what DeSantis proposed Monday. His focus is on how the state paid so much for a system that ultimately could not perform under significant duress. He did not say whether the inspector general would delve into how the agency responded to a crisis that all but paralyzed its system over the past six weeks.

Last week, two Tallahassee lawyers, acting on behalf of jobless workers who hadn’t been paid or were unable to access the DEO system, asked a Leon Circuit Court judge to declare an emergency and direct the agency to quickly make payments to thousands of Floridians. In court, the state said there is no emergency and asked that the lawsuit be dismissed. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Wednesday.

Driven by government shutdown mandates to deal with the coronavirus, Florida’s unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in March from 2.8% in February. Economists from around the state have consistently said that April will end up being the worst month for joblessness, which meant another dramatic spike in unemployment claims. The trend is likely to be mitigated to a degree in May as portions of the state’s economy — at the governor’s direction — reopen and businesses start rehiring.

But it remains uncertain how many businesses will start taking back employees as consumers remain cautious about returning to restaurants and other businesses that open their doors.

Over the weekend, the DEO said it focused on processing existing claims and making payments, making its website unavailable to existing claimants.

But it said the work did not affect access for people trying to file new claims at www.FloridaJobs.org.

The site again became available to everyone at 8 a.m. Monday.