“While operating in the extremely difficult public health environment created by COVID was understandably difficult… meaningful actions could have been taken sooner to meet the needs of the public,” said Hal Greer, director of the Joint Audit Commission and legislative review, at the start of Monday’s presentation.

Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s Labor Secretary Megan Healy oversees the employment commission and has defended its performance. Although she agreed the agency was not prepared for the pandemic, she argued in remarks to lawmakers that the root of the problem was a complicated federal funding formula that has long left the agency starved for resources. .

The work of the review panel will continue, with a final report and further recommendations for improvement expected in November. The following is an overview of the interim findings:

PROBLEMS OF TIMELINESS AND A GROWING BACKGROUND

In the past, the employment commission has typically made upfront payments on a timely basis, Lauren Axselle, who heads the review, said on Monday. But since the start of the pandemic, a problem has arisen.

The percentage of first payments meeting the federal government standard has declined sharply since the first quarter of 2020, and in July, only 26% of first payments were issued within 21 days. Nearly half of claimants waited more than 70 days for payment, Axselle said.

During this time, a backlog of more complex claims requiring a decision has built up.

While the VEC has finished adjudicating 92,000 claims, as required by a May 2021 class action settlement, other cases are piling up. More than 100,000 claims not included in the lawsuit still needed a decision in August, and around 1 million claims issues that had previously been bypassed to speed up payments may need to be reconsidered, Axselle said.

The VEC has not been able to hire enough staff to handle these complex cases. According to Axselle’s presentation, 46% of full-time adjudication positions were vacant in mid-July, and turnover within the agency was high, at 44% between January 2020 and July 2021.

First-level calls, which were also timely before the pandemic, now take twice as long as the national average of 275 days, according to his presentation.

PROBLEMS WITH ACCURACY AND OVERPAYMENT

To speed up payments, the agency approved some claims before reviewing key documents to determine eligibility, Axselle said. This has resulted in millions of dollars in overpayments, which are difficult to collect.

Last year’s rate of incorrect payments – which can result from fraud or error and are almost always overpayments – was just under 45%, she said, significantly higher than the 10% standard that the federal government considers acceptable, Axselle said. The agency reportedly issued $ 930 million in incorrect payments through the state-level unemployment insurance program last year, according to the presentation.

For now, all efforts to collect incorrect payments have been put on hold due to the backlog of pending decisions, Axselle said.

CALL CENTER FAILURES

Throughout the pandemic, Virginians have been frustrated trying to reach VEC’s customer service call centers. Many have taken to social media or online forums for help.

According to Monday’s presentation, the centers only answered a small portion of the calls, largely due to insufficient computer systems and under-staffing.

In June 2020, around 6% of calls were answered. In June 2021, things were worse, at 4% responses, according to the presentation. The average customer wait time also fell from around three hours to an average of 10 hours over the year. And millions of calls have been blocked entirely.

Even if a caller is successful, they cannot always reach an employee who can answer their question.

LONG-TERM PROBLEMS

Long before the pandemic led to government shutdowns and an increase in jobless claims, the VEC had too few staff to cope with the workload, Axselle said.

The agency, which uses a computer system developed in 1985 and relies on an almost obsolete programming language, is at the heart of a modernization project that began 12 years ago and should have been completed long ago.

This meant over-reliance on manual processes and paper documents, Axselle said. For example, VEC staff described having to manually enter applicant data into the system even when applications were submitted online, she said.

Of the. Terry Austin, a Republican from Botetourt, said after the presentation he continued to hear from voters – “their backs are against the wall” – facing problems with the agency.

“We just have to put this forward and get it fixed,” he said.