A federal “strike team” is descending upon California amid fears that California’s Unemployment Insurance program is mired in a swamp of fraud and improper payments.
“Financial issues and potential fraud in California’s unemployment insurance program will be fully examined. The previous administration turned a blind eye toward failing Labor programs: This ends now,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a Labor Departmentnews release.
“Immediately, we are engaging a specialized strike team to uncover any potential fraud or abuse and quickly moving to protect the American worker and taxpayer,” she said.
“I look forward to restoring the California UI program’s integrity and financial health,” she said.
California’s Employment Development Department has been cited by the Labor Department for poor performance.
Further, California also has dipped into the UI trust fund, which holds state-collected payroll taxes to pay the state portion of unemployment benefits.
California has borrowed $21 billion from the federal government to keep its system afloat, which is triggering increased UI taxes for state workers.
The Californiastate auditorruled that the agency overseeing UI payments was a high-risk agency.
A recent audit report said that “EDD’s fraud prevention approach during the
pandemic was marked by significant missteps and inaction that led to billions of dollars in unemployment benefit payments that EDD later determined may have been fraudulent.”
Source: VidNews » Feed
