If you’ve lived in Florida long enough, you know we’re not No. 1 in much.
Schools? No. Health care? Don’t be silly. Child welfare? Not even close.
But here’s one category where we’re No. 1: denying unemployment benefits.
The latest report shows that fewer than 12 percent of Florida’s unemployed workers get benefits.
Florida’s benefits, which temporarily help for laid-off workers, not the chronically unemployed, are already among the chintziest in America — averaging $239 a week for as few as 12 weeks.
How long that would pay your mortgage? Or pay your light bill? Or feed your family?
So we have some of the lowest benefits. And now comes word from the National Employment Law Project that we grant those chintzy benefits to the lowest percentage of unemployed workers in America.
Actually, we’re tied for last with South Carolina.
As Floridians often say: Thank God for the SEC states.
If it weren’t for Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, we’d be last in most everything.
Some Floridians are denied benefits because the state’s computer system — which applicants are required to use — doesn’t work. Some are denied because they struggle with Florida’s intense requirements — including a 45-question math, reading and research-skills test, which must also be completed online. Some don’t even apply.
So why should you care? Well, the odds are you don’t.
Let’s just be honest about it. Most people don’t pay a lick of attention to unemployment benefits … until they need them.
This is the case for a lot of safety-net issues newspapers cover, including the state’s horrible track record of denying benefits to special-needs families, which I wrote about last Sunday. Some families wait a decade for help they are qualified to receive. Some children die before aid is approved.
Most people don’t pay attention to any of these programs until they finally need to use them. Then, when they try — and learn how poorly they’re run — they suddenly they start screaming: “WHY ISN’T EVERYBODY ELSE SCREAMING ABOUT THIS??!!”
So indulge my screaming for a moment.
Even if you are like me — and have never needed unemployment benefits and hope you never will — I’ll give you three reasons why you should care about Florida’s messed-up system:
1) Many of the people missing out on benefits earned them. Yes, earned through previous work. Florida doesn’t help the chronically jobless.
2) The businesses that provide the benefits have already been taxed for them. The money is there.
3) You — and every other taxpayer in this state — spent $78 million on the state’s faulty computer system that has been malfunctioning from the day it was turned on. You should care about wasted money.
Imagine for a moment if that $78 million actually went to providing benefits. It would do so for more than 326,300 weeks.
But again, it didn’t. Instead, it was spent on a computer system — which applicants are forced to use — that froze up, shut down and worked as well as aluminum-foil rabbit ears on a TV.
This is old news. In fact, the state’s unemployment system and its local agencies have been messed up for years. Consider this trail of headlines:
“Gov. Scott vows to fix jobs agency” (2011)
“Jobless-claim process breeds frustration” (2013)
“Jobless-benefits glitches attract lawmakers’ ire” (2014)
“Legislators: Fix system for jobless” (2015)
Yet the system is still a mess — “virtually inaccessible,” according to the Employment Law Project.
At this point, you have to believe it is either intentional or depraved indifference.
The state’s own audit found that people can’t use the system, get improperly shut out, improperly denied and more.
Gov. Rick Scott and legislators need to stop yapping and start acting.
Sure, preach personal responsibility and deliver pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps lectures.
But when the state’s own straps keep breaking every time people start tugging, it becomes clear that the people ducking responsibility are the ones running the system.
