Unemployment: Accountability for mess starts at top

More than $100 million in losses from our precious Employment Security Trust Fund. Thousands of claims approved for impostors posing as school teachers we knew were not laid off. (Teachers don’t get laid off during the school year; they have contracts.)

Nobody anticipated that the swollen benefits may attract criminals. Nobody considered common-sense checks to alert them of fraudulent activity. (Ever had a fraud alert from your credit card company?)

I guess the Employment Security Department is not set up that way.

Consider the qualifications of the department head hired by Gov. Jay Inslee in May 2018. Commissioner Suzi LeVine’s last job was ambassador to Switzerland & Liechenstein (2014-2017). Early fraud detection was not part of her skill set.

Inslee should take these jobs seriously, not treat them as political handouts. What a mess.

This story was originally published May 30, 2020 at 7:53 AM with the headline "Unemployment: Accountability for mess starts at top."