Florida's Department of Economic Opportunity announced on Tuesday that nearly all eligible claimants who filed before December have been paid in full, but some Bay Area applicants said they're still owed thousands of dollars.
What You Need To Know
- DEO says 63,946 eligible claims still need to be paid
- Residents still reporting glitches in system, communication
- System was designed under previous Gov. Rick Scott
- LINK: DEO CONNECT
"Because of this, I got depressed, because I couldn't pay my bills," said Holiday resident Elizabeth Calderon. "I had to let go of the car."
Calderon, 50, said it took more than two months for the DEO to backdate her claim to March and she was finally issued a lump sum payment in November. Calderon said her health suffered during the time she was without any money.
"With all of this, I got condition heart failure. So, I couldn't get my medicine for a whole month," she said. "You have to be going from food bank to food bank and trying to get your bills paid. At least electricity and it's horrible."
Calderon said she's running out of money heading into the holiday season because once the DEO fixed her backdated claim, a new glitch appeared that would not allow her to claim federal PUA unemployment benefits.
If that glitch is not fixed by December 26, Calderon will lose the more than $4,000 in her pandemic unemployment assistance account.
"It took me two-and-a-half months to fix something in their system. Finally, that I got it now it knocked me off ... Now I can't get no more funds," she said. "It's like it's up in the air. It's always a fight with them. It's constantly something is always going on. You can't call them because they have these customer service people that they don't even work for the DEO. So, they can't really help you."
The $77 million unemployment compensation system was designed in 2011, by Deloitte Consulting and was launched in 2013, during then Gov. Rick Scott's administration. Scott is a current Florida Republican Senator who voted against a stimulus relief deal on Monday that would provide $300 in weekly federal unemployment benefits.
Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it appeared the unemployment system was designed to fail and launched an investigation. DeSantis spent $100 million upgrading the CONNECT system after it crashed multiple times at the beginning of the pandemic and added more than 2,000 call center employees.
Communication from the DEO is still poor, according to claimants.
Wendell Wilson, 63, from St. Petersburg, said he was deemed eligible for benefits, received one payment in April and can't find out why the money suddenly stopped flowing.
"Nobody has any explanations, no one has any advice other than 'just be patient' and I think I have been patient. I've been patient since April," he said. "I would just ask them to let me know if they've got any questions or there's something that's holding up. Let me know."
According to the DEO's latest data, there are 63,946 eligible claims that still need to be paid that have already been processed. Florida's unemployment rate for November was 6.3% with 640,000 claimants. That's down from the peak in May, when unemployment was 13.5% with more than 1.3 million claimants.
As of December 21, DEO has paid 2,147,752 claimants more than $19.5 billion, according to a press release. The DEO also states that 98.9 percent of all eligible benefits requested prior to December 4, for state and federal unemployment benefits have been paid in full.
DEO press secretary Paige Landrum notes, "the Department continues to work to modify claim effective dates as appropriate. The requests for these benefits are not included in this data."
Wilson said he's not happy with how the DEO has been run and hopes DeSantis is still paying attention to the problems.
"I think it's bad that they can't figure this out and I know there's enough money," he said. "I hope the governor hears this message, I hope he can do something about it because it is hurting a lot of people."
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