Posted on 01/30/2021 6:47:27 AM PST by Kaslin
MADISON — Last month, Gov. Tony Evers’ new secretary-designee of the dysfunctional state Department of Workforce Development claimed victory over a massive backlog of Unemployment Insurance claims.
It was a premature “mission accomplished” moment.
Just ask Ronald Letzia. The 70-year-old West Allis man has been waiting more than eight months for DWD to get its act together and pay the thousands of dollars in back unemployment benefits he’s owed.
Like thousands of other Wisconsin workers displaced because of the pandemic and government lockdowns, Letzia has been stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare. And while the Evers administration blames “antiquated” technology for the disaster, Letzia’s troubles with DWD have everything to do with agency incompetence and human error.
Tripped up and trapped
Letzia and his wife live on limited means, substantially counting on his Social Security check and small pension to make ends meet.
He had been working abut 22 hours a week stocking shelves at Target to supplement his income. When the COVID-19 outbreak hit, Letzia, who has health complications and is in the age category with the highest coronavirus-related death rate, was advised to stop working at the store.
He first applied for UI benefits on the week of May 13, according to documents provided to Empower Wisconsin. Letzia got caught up in a common glitch. He marked ‘yes’ to receiving Social Security Disability Insurance when he was actually receiving Social Security Income. He’s eligible for Unemployment Insurance benefits under the latter.
So, Letzia had to go through a hearing. He provided all of the proper documents from the Social Security Administration. He waited two months for a ruling. An adjudicator told him everything looked good.
Apparently not.
After getting the Social Security matter cleared up, DWD officials told him he wasn’t eligible because he had stated on his original claim that he was not willing and able to work. Many others have been tripped up and trapped by confusion over that line. Because his compromised health kept him from working at public places like Target, Letzia thought he should check that he was unable to work.
The glitch cost him more time. Then DWD officials told him he wasn’t eligible for standard state benefits, but instead had to apply for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Another common hurdle many claimants had faced. Letzia filed for PUA on Sept. 22. He got a note from his doctor, as required, and filled out all the paperwork.
A full month into the new year, Letzia is still waiting.
‘I feel totally useless’
He reached out to the governor’s office, and gave them the information they sought. That was weeks ago. He said he’s heard nothing since.
Letzia said staff in state Sen. Dale Kooyenga’s office have intervened on his behalf and have been extremely helpful, but the bureaucracy simply won’t move.
His situation turned all the worse when, on New Year’s Day, his supervisor from Target called him with bad news. The retail chain was letting him go because he hadn’t been able to work for eight months.
“I said, ‘Can you wait until after I get my shot? I’ll feel safer to work.’ She said, ’No,’” Letzia said. “I’ve been there for five years. I really like working there. It supplements my Social Security.” He just got his first COVID-19 vaccine this week.
“I want to submit a letter to the DWD. I hope I don’t have trouble now,” he added.
Letzia said he’s worked his whole life. Now, while he waits for the state to resolve his claim, he and his wife are behind on their mortgage, and they don’t know how they’re going to pay their property taxes. He’s counting on a tax refund or the promised stimulus payment.
“I feel totally useless. I get so depressed,” the elderly man said. “Not only can’t I work, I have no money coming in.”
Meanwhile, he claims he’s owed as much as $20,000 in federal unemployment payments — held up by an administration that has over the course of the last 10 months left thousands of Wisconsinites on the brink of financial collapse.
“If I ever get this back pay, I could get caught up on my house payments, credit cards we’ve been using. I could get to back to even. It would be a godsend.”
Blame shifters
Earlier this week, DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek held a nearly hour-long briefing. It was a session to blame the Republican-controlled Legislature for failing to fund upgrades to the agency’s system to process UI benefits. The mainstream media ate it up.
“I had heard anecdotally about the antiquated systems but I have to admit, I truly did not understand what DWD was dealing with until I got here,” said Pechacek, tapped in September to take over the troubled agency after Evers was forced to fire her predecessor. “Now we work in government, so no one expects the government to have the latest and greatest in any technology, but what DWD has been working with was a complete shock.”
No, it really wasn’t. Not too many in the agency and the administration, which knew about the problems long before they were exposed in the flood of Unemployment Insurance claims last spring. That crisis occurred in large part because Evers decided to lock down the state, which forced hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
As Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) noted in a letter to the governor this week, the administration has had all kinds of funding avenues available to it to fix the technology problems. They didn’t even have to ask the Legislature, the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee said.
“If you believe the UI IT System is truly the cause of the unacceptable backlog of unemployment claims under your administration, your action on this issue is egregiously overdue,” the lawmakers wrote.
Late last month, Pechacek proclaimed DWD had cleaned up the backlog of tens of thousands of UI claims stuck three weeks or more. But some 5,000 claimants like Letzia were left waiting in adjudication limbo.
Letzia continues to wait.
“I don’t know where to turn anymore, honest to God,” he said.
They should just proclaim that the bank and the town government are "landlords", that way dopey jo's EO will guarantee that they can keep the house and never be evicted.
Conservatives need to up our game of using the commmie's own rules against them.
What I find highly interesting is that the corrupt media has consistently played this as “the Department’s” struggles or “state government’s unemployment backlog”. We all know with certainty that if somehow this occurred under a Walker administration it would be daily news stories of people suffering, mostly minorities, under Walker’s unemployment failure. That is, the corrupt media would personalize it as Walker’s fault while they completely deflect it away from bumbling Evers.
Who challenges him next year?
You can get unemployment when you are 70?
If Evers is going to shut down Wisconsin, maybe he should have planned a little better?
Democrats can manage to screw up a one-car funeral. A LOT of the state’s bureaucrats just sluffed off and conveniently blamed “the pandemic” for their job failures, either by underperforming at work, or by sleazy methods of “working from home”, in which there was no attempt made to consult available records and do the necessary comparisons to determine the worthiness of a given claim.
Maybe the system just does not exist. Apparently nobody ever planned ahead for contingencies, because “that’s the way we ALWAYS did it!”
Why not?
Work is work regardless of age.
All the upgrades were done by Deloitte USA, with offices in 4 Indian cities.
Indian crap coders who can’t code while millions of Americans lose everything
Colorado is at the same level of cluster-eff.
You can get unemployment when you are 70?
—
Of course. As long as you have been working and have been just laid off - else its age discrimination and a law suit. I’m over that age and eligible, then so are you.
A friend of mine in Nevada filed for Unemployment on March 26, 2020. Hasn’t seen a dime.
They have been doing this for decades.
They have become so brazen about it after President Trump was elected, that most people are noticing it now.
So is Nevada. Multiple lawsuits against DETR have been file in Nevada.
The Alabama Department Of Labor (ADOL) is unbelievably dysfunctional! They tell EVERYONE to call an “inquiry line” whenever they need help (1800-361-4524) and it ALWAYS hangs up on the caller every time no matter what time of day or how often you call. Every number is just like that (except for the new claims line). I’ve called easily 200 times. Same thing. A recorded voice says “due to the high volume of calls we are unable to take your call at this time please call again later). They sooo suck and they know it. They wont even talk to anyone with an unemployment claim.
If you’re working, your employer is paying UE tax, so yes.
yep
he was working and has not retired
and at his age he has to take social security
This is not a system, process or software problem. It’s a lack of adult supervision.
When you hire a crap Indian outsourcing firm to upgrade most of the US unemployment systems and they fail spectacularly, it’s definitely a software engineering problem.
Deliotte and before them, HCL Technologies, had the contracts for many of the US State Unemployment Systems for decades now. Hint : the H in HCL does not stand for Honolulu or Houston. It stands for Hyderabad.
HCL Technologies? They are the Indian company that brought in $9/hr Software Engineers to work on the 737MAX project.
We all seen how that turned out.
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