Posted on 07/17/2020 3:50:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
As tens of thousands of Wisconsinites continue to wait for their unemployment benefits, we just learned that the state agency overseeing the program erroneously overpaid $21.2 million in benefits during the month of April alone. It’s an astounding illustration of the failure of leadership.
For countless Wisconsinites, "crisis" is the correct word to describe Wisconsin’s unemployment debacle. When a one-size-fits-all policy closed down the state’s economy in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a massive surge of unemployment claims became the most predictable outcome of that incredibly consequential decision.
From March 15 through July 7, nearly 730,000 applications were received by the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) and a total of nearly 4 million weekly claims filed. Of those, 529,000 weekly claims remained unpaid or in adjudication as of July 7.
Many people put out of work by the lockdown order but left without any income have contacted their legislators, desperate for help to pay their bills and avoid eviction or foreclosure.
My office and I have been helping hundreds of constituents, and most filed their first claim months ago. One constituent, Carol Glupker, has shared her story publicly. She says the financial stress of being reduced to having just a few dollars to her name and waiting three-plus months for answers from the DWD caused her blood pressure to spike. She spent some of the last few dollars she had left on blood pressure medication.
In a sign that the DWD’s problems aren’t technological but a basic problem of competence, she was recently denied Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) even though she provided a letter from her employer stating that she was laid off in the wake of COVID-19. Listen to Carol share her story on-air here.
Jennifer Robertson, another constituent, also shared her story publicly after being forced to wait ten weeks after first applying. She was on the brink of losing everything she worked for her whole life when, days after she told her story on the radio, she finally received the payment she desperately needed.
Constituent after constituent tells us about their inability to reach the DWD by phone or email despite calling sometimes thousands of times or waiting on hold for hours. Some who do get through report being hung up on, while others have been able to schedule a call with an adjudicator who never calls. Others are given useless information instead of decisions about their long-delayed claims.
My staff and I remain amazed and heartened by the upbeat attitudes of those who contact us, despite many being on their last financial leg. This is not a partisan issue—every legislator, regardless of party, is experiencing the same influx. While our options as legislative offices are limited, we are doing everything we can to help every person who contacts us.
But in the end, the DWD is where the action happens. The department has talked about the steps it has taken with the goal of reducing wait times and eventually clearing the backlog by sometime in the fall: transferring some employees from other departments, hiring additional staff, and contracting with outside call centers.
Despite these steps, untold numbers of Wisconsinites remain in limbo. Legislative offices are now being told that the people we refer to the DWD can expect to wait up to five weeks, up from just days at the end of March—and that’s with the help of a State Senate office. Similarly, many PUA applicants have been left hanging since April 21, when Wisconsin began taking applications for the program aimed at those who don’t qualify for regular unemployment.
The Evers administration has been quick to offer excuses and pin the blame on its political opponents. Evers’ officials blame anti-fraud reforms passed by Republicans. They blame the U.S. Department of Labor. A particular focus of their finger-pointing is UI’s outdated computer programming language, COBOL.
Over a dozen states still use COBOL. One is Iowa, which managed to retool their outdated system and begin paying out PUA about a week sooner than Wisconsin. Yet Wisconsin’s DWD employed 1,609 full-time equivalent positions in 2019, while Iowa’s workforce development agency employed 718 the same year. Adjusted for population, Wisconsin has 1.2 DWD employees for every Iowa Workforce Development employee. We should be getting better results.
Meanwhile, Colorado recently launched a new program allowing callers to their UI program to have basic questions answered by a virtual agent. The same system can schedule a call with a human agent for more complex questions, streamlining the state’s UI call center operations. Colorado also uses COBOL. Why couldn’t a similar system be set up in Wisconsin?
Another option is utilizing the National Guard to help with the UI influx, as Washington state recently did.
UI call centers in other states are open six days a week. By comparison, Wisconsin's, for all practical purposes, is, shockingly, only open 2.5 days a week. Why? Because UI seekers can only call on certain days determined by the first letter of their last name. Instead of considering all these other options, the governor decided to change the behavior of those seeking assistance instead of seeking changes from his DWD.
No doubt COBOL is a hindrance, but it’s the reality that we have been handed. A true test of leadership is how well a leader can identify a priority, work around problems and think outside the box to make progress against a crisis. A strong leader understands where the buck stops.
Wisconsin’s ongoing unemployment crisis is a national embarrassment. It is very disappointing to see that this governor and his team have failed a key test of leadership while knowing that Wisconsinites are paying the price.
As tens of thousands of Wisconsinites continue to wait for their unemployment benefits
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Some people have waited 3 months and others are still waiting. If your case has and issue and needs to be clarified, expect to wait even longer for the first check.
Beyond ridiculous, but what one would expect from a radical left Governor.
Ask Cobol2Java.
Better yet, get Scott Walker back.
I moved to Wisconsin last October and my position was eliminated in early April due to the virus. I applied for unemployment benefits online and my application was immediately put on hold because I still have a CA driver’s license. I tried hours each day to call for assistance. All of my calls were hung up on due to the high call volume. There was no way to get in line or leave a voicemail like a business.
I finally contacted my local representative and was helped by a member of her staff. He was able to take my information and get it to someone at the unemployment office. I had to wait two weeks for an appointment but eventually talked to a person and was able to finish filing my claim online.
My claim was immediately put on hold because they said I didn’t make enough money to qualify for benefits and that I walked away from a job. Both of these were not true. I could not dispute these allegations online and had to use the phone system which had not improved.
After a couple weeks of being hung up on, I contacted my state representative again. I explained my problems and told him how the system didn’t work. He forwarded my information to someone in the unemployment department and within a few days, I got a call that resolved everything.
My first and back payments came through three months after I filed my claim. I had to call my state representative twice. The people I talked to were competent and professional. The Wisconsin unemployment system is broken and Wisconsin leadership failed to anticipate and make the changes needed to process a high influx of calls.
Be careful pointing to Wisconsin. Florida’s system is equally bad or worse. Impossible to get onto. Once on my wife filed for her furlough. Then came the checks, fed additional money, in triplicate. Trying to stop them impossible. The kicker is furlough over and money has not stopped. Now there is a way to pay back over pays BUT no mention one will not receive a 1099 net of paid back over payments.
Too bad,,,,,the people voted in the libs and now are broke,,,,,live with it Wisconsin......
Scott Walker asks....miss me yet?
The problem with COBOL is finding COBOL cowboys to modify the programs.
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