Did California unemployment agency lie to lawmakers about aid denied during pandemic?

A new report that found California’s unemployment insurance agency had “mischaracterized” the number of people denied aid during the start of the pandemic was overly kind, a state lawmaker said Tuesday.

“I think ‘mischaracterized’ is a generous word for simply hiding the truth from the legislature,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, a Fresno Republican and outspoken critic of the Employment Development Department.

The report, written by the Legislative Analyst’s Office and released Monday, found the department had disqualified more than 3.4 million unemployment claims during the first 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In earlier reports to legislators, however, the department said it disqualified or denied just 705,000 claims during that period.

“They kept millions of disqualified claims secret and did not tell members of the California Legislature, like myself, that have oversight responsibility,” Patterson said in an interview.

Those denials included people who failed to respond to the agency with additional information. But they came as officials were overwhelmed with requests for help from those out of work because of the pandemic. Hundreds of pounds of mail sent to the department sat unopened. At times, less than 1 % percent of phone callers were able to reach an agency staff member.

When asked about the discrepancy, the agency told the analyst’s office it did not think it had to tell lawmakers the total claims of people it denied on state procedural grounds.

An EDD official said in an unsigned email that the agency was getting payments to people as fast as it could amid a historic spike in demand. The official pointed to claims information it publishes on its website, but did not respond directly to Patterson’s comments or those made in the recent report.

The analyst’s office report said the state’s unemployment program has likely denied between $500 million to $1 billion in benefits annually in recent years. Its application process was “difficult to understand and unnecessarily lengthy” and its “outdated technology” was inhibiting its ability to manage even routine tasks, the report said.

Patterson said those findings build on others from the state auditor about the agency’s performance during the pandemic. Previously, the auditor said the employment department did not follow warnings, leading it to pay out more than $10 billion in potentially fraudulent claims. And that the agency did not address issues with its call center’s performance, years before the health crisis began.

Patterson, who publicly called for an audit of the employment department, said the latest findings were as bad as he thought they would be. He added that he hoped lawmakers would push for more transparency from the agency in the next legislative session.