Since the start of the pandemic, thousands of people throughout our state lost their job through no fault of their own and turned to unemployment insurance for assistance. Unfortunately, when thousands of people applied they found their claim lost in the bureaucracy, some with no end in sight, even after repeated attempts to get through to a claim specialist.

Last April, the legislature acted and gave the governor power to transfer as many state employees as necessary to help process the backlog. Unfortunately, this flexibility was not used to its maximum potential. As reported in a recent non-partisan audit of the Unemployment Insurance Division, “The Department of Workforce Development was responsible for 11 of the 13 weeks (84.6%) that it took, on average, to resolve the initial claims… the agency had not resolved issues even though it had the information…” To also help the unemployed, the legislature provided the governor with up to $100 million in state funds to help and encouraged him to use part of the $2 billion in federal CARES Act funding to help people waiting for an answer. This funding could have been used to provide additional staffing, increase call center hours, or been used to help with programming the computers. To my frustration, the money was not used and people continued to wait… and wait while Wisconsin became one of the last states in the nation to pay out enhanced federal unemployment benefits.

In response to the governor’s inactions, the Legislature passed bipartisan legislation that directs the governor to start upgrades to the Unemployment Insurance computer system within the next 30 days. The bill also includes provisions to waive the one-week waiting period to capture additional funding while also helping keep unemployment insurance taxes down for businesses.

The legislation passed the State Assembly 89-0, and was recently signed into law by the governor. Hopefully this time the people of our state no longer have to wait to get the relief they deserve.