WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Two Democratic Senators are calling on the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate Florida's failure to process unemployment claims during the coronavirus pandemic.
The letter is addressed to the department's inspector general and is signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is also the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Schumer and Wyden write while most states have seen dramatic increases in the number of people applying for unemployment, "Florida's performance has proved uniquely poor" in its ability to get financial assistance to the millions of people requesting unemployment assistance in the state.
The senators are calling on the Department of Labor's Inspector General Scott Dahl to investigate the state's unemployment problems. And, they urge a look at whether state leaders have been properly processing and distributing unemployment benefits "in according with guidelines established by the CARES Act."
More than two million Floridians have filed unemployment claims in the last several months, and the state has struggled to process the influx since the beginning of the pandemic.
The DEO's claims website, CONNECT, crashes regularly and has been shut down during several weekends for maintenance. Some Floridians have said they spent hours trying to do their claims or talk to someone on the phone for assistance.
Last week, the CONNECT system added a virtual waiting room it claims will allow for more efficient user experience. However, some users were caught off guard and don't have time to sit in front of a computer waiting to get into the system.
According to Florida's Department of Economic Opportunity, the state's unemployment rate reached a record high in April at nearly 13 percent. That was about triple the rate back in March when health and safety procedures and lockdowns began because of the pandemic.
The letter states the DEO has processed payments for just 28 percent of the more than two million people who have applied for assistance since March 15. $4.4 billion has been paid so far to more than 1.2 million people.
The Associated Press reported that state leaders said more than 90 percent of the 1.3 million eligible claimants have been paid. The state's calculation does not include nearly 500,000 people it has initially deemed ineligible for benefits.
Comparing Florida to Schumer's home state of New York, which has about two million fewer people, the state has paid out more than $10 billion in unemployment claims.
The letter states Florida's unemployment system problems aren't new, and that Gov. Ron DeSantis has recently criticized the program and called for an investigation into CONNECT. DeSantis has said the system was designed "basically to fail."
The state spent $70 million on CONNECT and it went live in 2013, which is when the problems began. Sen. Rick Scott was the governor of Florida at the time and said CONNECT replaced a 30-year-old system.
DeSantis and other state and federal lawmakers have called for investigations into how CONNECT was paid for, how the company that designed it got the contract and amendments to that contract.
"Despite the system's well documents problems, inaction from both current and past gubernatorial administrations in Florida left FLDEO completely unprepared to respond to record increases in unemployment claims caused by a pandemic," the letter reads.
10 Tampa Bay reached out to Scott's office about the senators' letter and received the following statement from his press secretary:
"Senator Schumer should be focused on solving the problems in his own state, including the fact that New York can’t manage their budget and is begging for a handout from the federal government.
Every state in the country has faced challenges dealing with the unprecedented volume of suddenly unemployed workers. The important thing is to get relief to people who need it as fast as possible, and Senator Scott will continue working with his colleagues, as well as state and local officials, to do just that."
Rep. Charlie Crist, who was Florida's governor from 2007 to 2011, sent this statement to 10 Tampa Bay:
“I’d like to echo Senators Wyden and Schumer’s call for a federal investigation into the Florida unemployment system. We have constituents who still haven’t received their $600 checks, with no explanation from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. We need to get to the bottom of how this happened and fix these problems once and for all.”
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