Democratic state lawmakers revealed proposed legislation Thursday that they believe would help solve many of Florida's major unemployment problems.
What You Need To Know
- Suggestions include other ways to apply, increasing payout amounts, number of weeks
- Unemployment website has been plagued by problems
- LINK: Read the proposed bill
- SEE ALSO: 840,000 more Americans apply for unemployment
Some of the solutions call for other ways to apply, increasing the payout amounts and the number of weeks.
Lawmakers say they want to modernize the state’s broken unemployment system to make it more fair and efficient.
“Create a system that wants to help you, versus a system that looks for reasons to reject you,” Orlando-based Rep. Anna Eskamani said of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity and its website.
Some of the proposed changes call for:
- Increasing the minimum weekly payment from $32 to $100.
- Increasing the maximum from $275 to $500.
- Increasing the number of payout weeks from 12 to 26.
- Broadening eligibility to include self-employed people.
- Changing the way claims are backdated.
The proposed bill also calls for an eligibility deadline.
“Rather than have someone's eligibility be determined when their application gets though, we're saying it should be the date that they became unemployed and that's a very big change,” said state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez of Miami.
Largo resident Greg Pipes, 60, was laid off from his job at Honeywell in June. He said he's now been waiting for more than three months for the DEO to process his unemployment claim. He is one of thousands looking for help.
“It definitely, it needs a complete overhaul," he said. "I've never seen a government agency perform this poorly as this."
Another big proposed change would be to allow people to file over the phone or through email, instead of forcing them to run the gauntlet on the Connect website.
"It needs to made within three weeks of the claim submission. We think that's the reasonable amount of time,” said Rep. Ben Diamond of St. Petersburg. “But the idea that we're just going to let people float in limbo indefinitely is just not fair, it's just not right, and we can fix it."
Lawmakers also want to drastically improve customer service from the DEO.
The nearly $78 million Connect system was developed when Republican Rick Scott was governor. It crashed again this week.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says the website was designed to fail and ordered an investigation back in May.