Why can’t Gavin Newsom fix California’s unemployment center? Phone lines still jammed
A year ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood before the people of California and proclaimed he’d take bold steps to fix the state’s overwhelmed unemployment claim system.
“Our top priority has been on processing these claims,” he declared at an April 10, 2020 news conference.
Today, thousands still can’t get through every day on the Employment Development Department’s phone line. Billions of dollars have been paid in fraudulent claims. Improving the technology remains a work in progress.
Newsom is facing a recall election, and Republicans are using EDD’s turmoil as strong, relatable evidence he’s not fit for the job.
“I think the recall is a movement not just to remove Newsom as governor, but to root out those fundamental problems and try to set the state on a new course,” said Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin.
When asked what the governor is doing to remedy the EDD ills, Newsom’s office directed The Bee to EDD. The agency responded with a Wednesday press release touting progress in making its call center more efficient, combating fraud and establishing a new online library to help its staff research information rapidly..
Last week, in its report to the California Legislature, EDD also cited successes. It’s paid out $140 billion in claims since the pandemic sent the economy reeling in March 2020.
”In just five months through the monumental efforts made by many dedicated employees, the EDD paid more than triple the total number of benefit payments made during the worst year of the Great Recession,” the agency told the Legislature.
But it noted that huge workload demands, an “antiquated” technology and a maze of federal programs has “caused the Department to delay the prompt filing and paying of much-needed unemployment benefits to many other Californians. “
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, a frequent EDD critic, said Newsom had been “handed a fundamentally broken agency that had struggled for decades.”
“After appointing a strike team and changing EDD leadership, the governor has taken many critical steps to reform the agency,” he said. “We know we have more work to do, including modernizing EDD’s IT infrastructure and ensuring Californians who don’t speak English can access benefits.”
Activists understand that the surge in claims driven by the pandemic overwhelmed EDD. But they said much more could have been done to navigate through the emergency.
“The governor and EDD missed many opportunities to improve EDD’s procedures to provide more timely payments to claimants during the past year,” said Daniela Urban, executive director of the Center for Workers’ Rights in Sacramento.
Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, noted that the agency’s call center was cited by the state auditor long before Newsom took office in 2017 for its poor call-answering record.
“EDD has been aware of key operational issues for 10 years,” said State Auditor Elaine Howle in her January report, “but it failed to develop a comprehensive recession plan.”
Patterson and other Republicans say that means Newsom should have seen the problems coming.
“This should have been number one on his priority list. It wasn’t. This is now his failure,” Patterson said.
California EDD in turmoil
It quickly became clear last spring that EDD was overwhelmed.
The state’s unemployment rate surged from 3.9% in February to 15.5% in April. In the mid-March week before the pandemic triggered a virtual shutdown of the state, 57,606 claims were processed. Two weeks later, that total rocketed to 878,727.
The EDD’s call center, a primary source of help for people needing help with their claims, was operating from 8 a.m. to noon.
People couldn’t get through. When they did, many consumers told The Sacramento Bee that staff often couldn’t answer their questions. One complication: Congress added a new benefit, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, with new rules that were being formulated even as benefits began to flow.
Newsom vowed quick action. “We still believe we can cut those checks within that traditional timeline despite this unprecedented surge of requests and applications,” he said at an April 2020 news conference.
EDD would shift 550 workers “just to focus on that,” he said, and the call center hours would be expanded.
The call center was expanded to 12 hours a day, but only to answer general and technical questions — not deal with more complex questions about individual issues. State officials explained it often takes months to train workers in the complexities of unemployment insurance policy.
While EDD quadrupled its call center staff to more than 5,600, the auditor found it was “often unable to assist callers and only marginally improved the percentage of calls it answered.”
Adding to the chaos was a series of massive fraud schemes. State officials have estimated that about $11 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims have been paid so far, and that $19 billion in claims are suspicious.
In July, Newsom named a special “strike force,” headed by Government Operations Agency Secretary Yolanda Richardson and Jennifer Pahlka, who co-founded the United States Digital Response, to examine EDD.
Newsom’s strike force made sweeping recommendations aimed at improving service and today, EDD has reported progress on several fronts.
Last fall, the agency began measures to verify claimants’ identity with the ID.me program, and expanded its contract with a security firm to provide help with taking steps to identify fraud.
Last week the state Task Force on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Fraud reported its efforts have led to the arrest of 68 suspects and the opening of 1,641 additional investigations.
Unemployment claim progress?
Regarding customer service, in late January, Howle made 14 major recommendations concerning EDD operations.
One, creating a dashboard on the EDD website where people can see information about the number of claims processed, calls answered and so on, has been implemented.
The other 13 are listed as “in progress.” Five involve improvements to the call center, which the auditor suggests should be made this month.
EDD noted Wednesday that its efforts include a new AskEDD web platform with enhanced navigation to help people find information more easily, improved search functions, and additional monitoring to identify trending issues so that EDD can continually improve the quality of information.
But the main point of personal contact with EDD, getting through to the call center, remains a challenge for many.
During the week ending April 24, there were 4.118 million calls into EDD lines. They came from 387,404 callers, meaning many people had to try repeatedly to get through.
The call center answered 288,371 of all calls, or 7%. Put another way, it eventually answered 74% of all callers.
Part of the reason was an increased number of federal benefit programs as well as a need for people to recertify their employment status as their benefit year ends.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, said her district office staff has taken on the duties of caseworkers in light of the EDD problems. Her office alone has helped over 6,000 people with their claims.
The problems with EDD existed well before the pandemic, but there was little political will to update IT systems or invest in robust staffing, Gonzalez said. The slough of COVID-related claims, combined with the subsequent cases of fraud, only added to the problems of an already fragile system.
It will take significant, long-term investment to prevent something like this from happening again, she said.
“There’s just systematically so many problems we’re going to chip away at, but it’s not going to be an easy answer,” she said.
Newsom and the recall
Republicans, meanwhile, see EDD’s problems as a key issue in their effort to recall Newsom.
Californians who lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic simply can’t count on the government to help them put food on the table, Kiley said.
“I think the recall is a movement not just to remove Newsom as governor, but to root out those fundamental problems and try to set the state on a new course,” he said.
They note Newsom omitted the EDD crisis from his State of the State address in March as thousands still struggled to access benefits.
“The agency’s IT is so dysfunctional it had to create a page so Californians can track whether the website is actually down or it is just so pathetically slow a normal person would assume it was,” said state Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, in March. “Under the leadership of this current administration, EDD has continued to fail.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Why can’t Gavin Newsom fix California’s unemployment center? Phone lines still jammed."
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