Can’t prove you deserved California unemployment benefits? You may be in the clear
California can waive requirements that people who may not have been entitled to some unemployment benefits repay the money, the U.S. Labor Department said Monday.
The state has been asking more than 1 million people to provide evidence they properly received benefits under federal guidelines. If they couldn’t do so, they were told, they’d probably have to repay the money and could face financial penalties.
Last week, the state Economic Development Department, which manages California’s unemployment insurance program, joined other states in seeking more lenient policies.
On Monday, federal officials agreed.
Easing unemployment proof
The department could not say Monday exactly how it will be able to apply the new policies. But too often during the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been struggling and need that money, EDD Director Nancy Farias. said.
“The directive released (Monday) looks promising for claimants, and we will be carefully reviewing all of the details,” she said.
The federal labor department said it would allow scenarios where states could ease its policies, giving a break to people who:
▪ Said they were unable to work and were unavailable for work, yet got certain federally-funded benefits without a determination they were eligible.
▪ Were overpaid after saying they were unemployed, partly employed or could not work for coronavirus-related reasons – but didn’t prove to EDD that they actually qualified for the payments.
.▪ Were eligible for payments and got more than may have been warranted.
▪ Given overly generous benefits because the state incorrectly calculated the benefit. In those cases, the state relied on guidance from the Disaster Assistance Program.
▪ Were overpaid after they submitted proof they had earned income from self-employment, and the state had incorrectly processed their information.
The changes come months after the payments stopped on federal pandemic programs because states have been methodically working their way through massive backlogs.
“We knew there were mistakes and shifting guidance. Last fall we started to see some patterns, and five of those are reflected in those patterns,” Michele Evermore, the Labor Department’s deputy director of the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization, told The Ssacramento Bee.
If states continue to find new patterns involving overpayment, the department can take further action, she said.
Evermore could not say how much money is involved nationwide, as states are still dealing with the backlogs.
Since November, EDD has sent notices to more than a million California residents that because of federal requirements, they had to show documents to validate their employment or self-employment status prior to the start of their federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claim in 2020 and 2021.. As of last month, only about 20% had responded.
PUA was the federal program created in March 2020, as COVID-19 quickly surged. It was designed to help those who worked in jobs that traditionally did not qualify for regular unemployment benefits. About 2.9 million Californians benefited from the program.
PUA, which ended in September and lacked some of the same safeguards as the states’ regular unemployment programs, became a target for scammers, and estimates are that in California, about $20 billion in federal money may have been paid on fraud claims.
EDD has been notifying people who have to submit the information by sending texts, emails and by using the unemployment insurance online homepage to notify claimants.
The department will soon start another phase of notifications by also sending out paper notices to those impacted claimants who have not yet responded with instructions about how to provide the documents required by the federal government.
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