Forget the recall, California’s EDD mess poses bigger challenge to Gov. Gavin Newsom
If you think Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing a great job, you probably haven’t tried to contact the Employment Development Department lately.
The EDD’s beleaguered website had another major outage last weekend, reported Emily Hoeven of CalMatters. “The Employment Development Department’s website was unable to process claimants’ information over the weekend and was still plagued with difficulties Monday,” wrote Hoeven.
EDD officials told Hoeven over 500,000 people were able to file unemployment insurance claims despite “intermittent” website problems. Yet nearly six months after Newsom boldly promised to clear a backlog of 1 million unemployment claims at the EDD, the problem continues to worsen.
In late July, Newsom announced the formation of an EDD “strike team” to “modernize information technology programs,” “transform the customer experience” and “focus on immediately processing claims.” The governor set a deadline to fix the COVID-19 pandemic-induced backlog by the end of September.
On a Saturday night in September, the strike team released its highly-anticipated report. The report made it clear that the governor would not be able to keep his promise to quickly clear the backlog. It also made 100 recommendations to improve the department.
The Saturday night dump was an attempt to bury bad news, but the Newsom administration claimed the 8:52 p.m. press release was simply an effort at efficiency.
“His attempt to bury the report does not inspire confidence,” wrote The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board in an editorial titled “Gov. Gavin Newsom buried EDD ‘strike team’ report. Can he fix California’s unemployment mess?”
Six months later, the answer continues to be a resounding no. The EDD’s director officially retired at the end of 2020. The fiasco also haunts Julie Su, Newsom’s labor secretary, who is up for the post of deputy secretary of labor in the Biden administration. She faced a tough grilling on the issue in U.S. Senate confirmation hearings last week.
Republican senators homed in on the fact that, in addition to failing to respond to legitimate claims, the EDD under Su’s watch had paid out billions of dollars in false claims during the pandemic.
“While Julie Su oversaw California’s unemployment insurance system, the state paid out up to $31 billion in fraudulent claims during the pandemic,” read a tweet from a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee account controlled by the staff of Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina. “Now the Biden Admin wants to promote her.”
Republicans in California have also seized on the EDD issue, providing regular updates on the department’s technology failures.
“The agency’s IT is so dysfunctional it had to create a page so Californians can track whether the website is actually down or it is just so pathetically slow a normal person would assume it was,” said state Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, in a statement yesterday. “The IT problems at EDD are legendary, but didn’t even garner a mention in the Governor’s State of the State.”
The frustration is bipartisan because legislative offices have been flooded with calls from constituents, many of whom are out of work due to COVID-19 and can’t get through to EDD. In February, Democratic legislators unveiled a slate of proposed EDD reforms, with some based on recommendations from the governor’s strike team report.
“Many of the issues EDD is facing today have been known since the Great Recession,” said Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco). “Almost nothing was done over the years to plan for another economic downturn.”
The proposed EDD reforms aim to increase oversight, streamline functions and protect the rights of Californians forced to deal with the department. They seem likely to pass the Legislature and provide Newsom with a slate of reforms to tout as progress.
Future reforms will do nothing to help those currently suffering because of EDD’s breakdown, however. The threat of a recall election pales in comparison to the challenge Newsom faces in keeping his promise to clear the EDD backlog.