National Guard to help clear backlog of state jobless claims delayed over ID verification
Story updated June 12 with National Guard totals.
The head of Washington’s Employment Security Department on Thursday gave new details on efforts to get jobless benefit claims paid while continuing to ferret out false applications.
ESD Commissioner Suzi LeVine told reporters at her Thursday briefing that while progress hasn’t gone “as quickly as we would hope,” the department now has more than 300 workers focused strictly on the ID verification process and will be adding National Guard to the ranks next week.
The first 50 National Guard troops will start next week, with another 50 starting shortly thereafter.
For people who were receiving benefits before the mid-May clampdown on accounts, and have since seen their payments paused, “we expect to have ID issues resolved by June 19,” LeVine said.
A swarm of imposter fraud by criminals filing false claims with ESD triggered a pause in payments.
An initial 190,000 accounts were flagged about May 15 for scrutiny amid the wave of false filings.
That number, LeVine said, is down to 78,000.
Of that, “there were 42,000 already receiving payments, so we are focusing on between now and next Friday getting those folks restarted,” LeVine explained Thursday.
That leaves another 36,000 with issues beyond just an ID vetting. LeVine hoped all of that group would see their issues resolved by the end of June “if not sooner.”
On Wednesday, the state auditor’s office announced it would conduct two audits looking at ESD’s performance in battling the fraudulent claims and the program’s computer systems.
Regular audit work is already under way in the department over federal funding.
The false claims took an estimated $550 million to $650 million, of which LeVine has said ESD has been able to recover more than $330 million with the help of banks and federal law enforcement.
ESD said Thursday that 29,713 initial regular unemployment claims were filed May 31 through June 6, down 4.8 percent from the previous week.
In Pierce County, initial regular claims filed decreased from 4,069 to 3,703, down 9 percent from the week before, according to ESD.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 12:44 PM.
