Report: State Made Unemployment Payments to Dead People, Children Under 13, People Over 90
An Illinois Department of Employment Security office.
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A new report from the Illinois Auditor General shows the Illinois Department of Employment Security, the state’s unemployment agency, failed in accurately verifying eligibility for unemployment payments and didn’t properly track money that was going out to applicants.
Republicans are raising cain about the report. The report only covers the first quarter of the pandemic in calendar year 2020, and GOP senators want the Auditor General to do a full performance audit of IDES.
The Auditor General’s report shows IDES mismanaged dispersal of additional federal unemployment funds. In the first three months of the pandemic, over 4,500 unemployment claimants did not have their identities validated and those 4,500 people were paid around $41.6 million.
35 people who received the federal unemployment dollars from the state had died at the time they received the payments.
Sen. Win Stoller (R-Peoria) called the IDES failures “incompetence.”
63 claimants were over 90 years old. 164 people receiving benefits were between the ages of birth and 13 years old. And 31 people were receiving multiple benefits with multiple social security numbers. Those people were paid $2.7 million.
IDES, by the way, did not have the ability to send notices to people that they had been overpaid.
“That’s not good government. That’s not leadership. That’s not helping the people of Illinois,” said Sen. Jason Plummer (R-Peoria). “This is a disaster and it was completely completely avoidable.”
GOP senators say they’ll introduce a resolution to launch a formal performance audit from the Auditor General.
An IDES spokesperson did not respond to The Illinoize Thursday.