By: Mike Rogoway
https://muckrack.com/rogoway
Oregon said Tuesday that 49,000 claims for jobless benefits are stuck in an adjudication backlog that can last for months.
It’s the first time the Oregon Employment Department has made any specific estimate of how many claims are being held up by adjudication. That’s an arduous, legally mandated process required of claims from some people with complicated work histories and those who were laid off or furloughed by educational institutions that usually employ them year-round.
Hobbled by an obsolete computer system, and overwhelmed by an unprecedented flood of jobless claims that poured in during the pandemic, Oregon has struggled to pay out jobless benefits since March. Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians went weeks or months waiting for benefits – and tens of thousands are still waiting.
David Gerstenfeld, the employment department’s interim director, testified before a Senate committee Tuesday that the vast majority of standard claims now have been resolved.
>>Oregon has paid $4.4 billion in jobless benefits to 416,000 Oregonians since the state began its coronavirus shutdown in March. Most of that money is from a federal program, now expired, that provided a $600 weekly bonus for unemployed workers.
On Tuesday, though, Gerstenfeld said the state is still working to pay many claims for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, a new class of benefits Congress created in March for self-employed workers. There appear to be more than 20,000 claims yet to be resolved in that category.
The biggest single class of unpaid benefits is for claims that require adjudication. Until Tuesday, the employment department said it couldn’t even calculate how many people were stuck in that classification.
The employment department has expanded the number of adjudicators from 80 before the pandemic to 330 now, according to Gerstenfeld. He said that the department has shortened the training process, which usually lasts up to four months, to enable new adjudicators to focus on specific issues.
In the past, the employment department has said the adjudication backlog is up to 16 weeks long. Gerstenfeld did not update that number Tuesday and the employment department did not respond to a request for a current figure.
Some claimants waiting for adjudication can get paid in advance through a program Oregon launched in July, called “benefits while you wait.” It’s not clear how many people qualify, or how many people that program has actually paid.
>>Separately, Gerstenfeld said Tuesday that Oregon remains on track to begin paying a $300 weekly unemployment bonus by the end of this month. That program, established by President Donald Trump’s executive order, provides a bonus for each week from late July through early September.
Oregonians receiving regular unemployment benefits must certify their eligibility in order to receive the $300 weekly bonus.
Also Tuesday, Gerstenfeld said the state still expects to begin paying hundreds of millions of dollars in “waiting week” benefits to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians by the end of November. In March, Congress waived the usual one-week waiting before laid-off and furloughed workers are eligible for unemployment benefits.
Oregon’s rickety computers have been unable to make those payments, though, and the state has been at risk of missing an end-of-year deadline to make the payments – and potentially forfeiting the federal money. The employment department says it is unaware of any other state that has failed to pay the waiting week benefits.
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/09/oregon-says-49000-employment-benefits-claims-are-held-up-in-adjudication.html