BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The Louisiana Legislative Auditor took a close look last year at how the Louisiana Workforce Commission distributed benefits during the pandemic.
Then, it found the LWC had issues with its reporting and weak security, leading to people getting pandemic benefits they did not qualify for.
In a follow-up report, the state auditor found the LWC still has some issues to address. It includes putting in better internal controls to make sure claims are not fraudulent.
LWC Secretary Ava Cates released the following statement in response to the audit’s findings:
When COVID hit and the federal government rolled out CARES Act funding, state agencies like LWC were prohibited from verifying employment and wages and relied upon people’s honesty when filling out their applications. States were inundated with claims that appeared to qualify for benefits based on the information we were allowed to ask. Our people were in need, and our goal first and foremost was to help them. We had a responsibility to deliver payments as quickly as possible, and because of our efforts, Louisiana was one of the first states to start delivering COVID-19 funds to what is now nearly one million Louisianians. To date, we’ve paid out over $11 billion to individuals who needed it to keep a roof over their head and food on the table for their families.
When Congress implemented identification, employment and wage verification requirements due to widespread fraud, we did that. LWC actually implemented identity verification in Nov. 2020, two months before it was required federally. LWC has implemented programs like ID.me to verify claimants’ identities and Steady to verify the income of gig workers who had qualified for pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
Pandemic unemployment benefits ended July 31, 2021 in Louisiana, and LWC is still processing benefits for the hundreds of thousands of individuals that filed between March 2020 and then. The fact-finding and adjudication of these benefits takes time and follows a process prescribed by federal and state law. Staff has to review those one by one.
Our goal is always to ensure that our UI system runs efficiently for the benefit of those individuals that depend on it, and we will remain focused on improving the system for the State of Louisiana as a whole.
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