TAMPA, Fla. — Day after day, for weeks, we’ve been hearing stories from people unemployed, many the first time in their lives. When they needed help from the state, it wasn’t there.
“The unemployment system that we’re going to talk about has been an epic fail,” said Democratic State senator Janet Cruz who took to Facebook Live Thursday with Tampa Mayor Jane castor to vent her frustration. “This system that we built is designed to be difficult. It was designed to make it hard to get unemployment benefits, and now that mainstream Florida needs help, it’s really quite difficult.”
Cruz is urging Floridians to not give up, to keep trying, but also to also be proactive.
“You’ll want to have very clear records since we cannot rely on this computer system to accurately reflect how long you’ve been waiting for benefits,” said Cruz in her Thursday afternoon discussion on social media.
“Claims should be retroactive. You may be applying today, but maybe you’ve been out of work for two or three weeks. So make sure that you get what you are owed.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says state employees are working around the clock to fix a system he inherited from former Gov. Rick Scott.
“For weeks, the system was in tatters. People couldn't even get on,” said DeSantis as a news conference Friday morning. “There's going to have to be a whole investigation that needs to be done about how the state of Florida could have paid $77 million for this thing.”
The website was created back in 2013. Sen. Rick Scott was unavailable for an interview Friday but addressed the topic recently on radio station WBUR out of Boston.
“What you do in a crisis, you don't point fingers. What you do is you lead,” said Scott. “In the case of unemployment, this is unprecedented, the number of new people. But you know, leaders lead."
But DeSantis says that's what he's doing. The state reports it paid out 72 percent of all its new unique claims. They've also created a new mobile friendly website that's supposed to work better. The state says the site will be taken down over the weekend to process claims, but that only effects people who have already filed and are trying to log back on. People filing for the first time should still have access to the site, 24/7.
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