After month of delays, Michigan unemployment agency says jobless can certify this weekend

After at least a month without receiving any unemployment insurance benefits, claimants on two federal programs should expect to be able to certify beginning this weekend, Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency confirmed Thursday.

Michigan's UIA said it will meet its goal for getting the new federal programs up by Saturday, and laid out an explanation for the delay.

It's welcome news for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers in Michigan who have been unable to certify throughout this past month as the state's UIA rolled out the new programs in phases.

The group awaiting benefits includes claimants seeking Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) or through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program who had exhausted their benefit weeks by Dec. 26.

The pandemic-specific benefits allow contract employees, self-employed workers or those who wouldn't typically qualify for benefits to access funds while out of work. There also are people who used all their unemployment benefits last year and were waiting on this extension.

There are at least 200,000 Michigan residents who fall into one of these two groups and who haven't received a check since the end of December, at the latest. They didn't get guidance on when they could expect to receive benefits until Jan. 19, leaving many wondering if their checks would come at all.

Starting this weekend, they'll able to sign up for benefits, or "certify." They should also be able to receive back pay for the four weeks they were waiting for the state to set up these benefits.

These payments will include Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (PUC) of $300 weekly, paid out through March 13. The PUA and PEUC programs are extended through that same time period. After that, U.S. Congress would need to act again to extend benefits.

But after a month of delays, both claimants and experts in unemployment insurance are left wondering why it took so long to get these programs up and running. And with only two months before the programs expire, there could be another gap ahead.

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Who's to blame

Michigan's UIA points to the U.S. Congress' eleventh-hour approval of the latest stimulus package along with the subsequent days it took for then-President Donald Trump to sign the bills into law as reasons for the delay.

Trump signed the bills into law Dec. 27, after the PUA and PEUC programs had already expired in Michigan.

Michigan was one of several states that communicated to the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Congress that "significant policy changes to the federal programs could take many weeks for us to implement," said Lynda Robinson, a spokesperson for Michigan's UIA.

More: Some Michigan unemployment claimants can certify for pandemic benefits this week

More: Nearly 20,000 Michigan residents file for unemployment benefits as more aid is promised

If negotiations had been completed earlier and the bill passed sooner, there would have been less of a delay in getting the benefits to workers, Robinson said.

Michele Evermore, senior policy analyst of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit National Employment Law Project, said she was getting calls from state unemployment agencies' representatives on Christmas Eve, looking for her help in deciphering the bill language, which wasn't released until Dec. 21.

“I absolutely blame Congress for most of this," she said, along with Trump.

Still, the extent of the delays with implementation seen in Michigan and in states around the country have left unemployment experts scratching their heads.

"It’s taking states longer than even I anticipated to implement things, and I’ve been a pessimist," Evermore said.

Many steps involved

In order to get these new programs implemented, the state must write and test the code for the computer system, which they use to help automate a decision on whether somebody who applies for unemployment benefits qualifies for them.

Chris O'Leary, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, said he's surprised, too. He acknowledged the challenges of getting a new federal program up and running quickly but said this isn't new territory, as Michigan already had to get the PUA program implemented quickly in April.

Michigan was one of the first states to make the PUA program available by mid-April last year, and was also one of the first states to start paying out the $600 federal supplemental unemployment benefit.

This time around, it's difficult to track where other states are compared to Michigan in implementing the new federal programs because there's no one centralized location for tracking this information, nor is there one uniform way that states approach this.

“States are getting different parts of the relief out at different times," said Evermore. "Some states feel they need to be super cautious.”

By way of comparison, in Ohio, claimants who exhausted their regular state benefits in December will be able to claim the new PEUC benefits beginning Sunday, while those new to PUA will be able to apply, claim weeks and receive benefits on Feb. 6, according to a Wednesday news release from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Robinson acknowledged that having the base code written for a program "almost always makes things a bit easier," but called the changes to the new PUA and PEUC programs "significant."

That's why the agency was able to get the $300 PUC benefit to those on regular state benefits and on the Extended Benefits (EB) program first.

"It took minimal development as it mirrors the PUC program from last year very closely," she said.

The MiDAS touch

Michigan's UIA argues that the delays are largely unavoidable but unemployment advocates point to the state's history in making unemployment benefits difficult to access.

At the center of the debate is the agency's controversial computer program, the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System. MiDAS wrongly accused as many as 40,000 state residents of fraud between 2013 and 2015, which operated without human supervision and with an error rate as high as 93%.

To get the new programs implemented, the agency had to wait on guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, which was released on Jan. 5.

There was not much that could be done in the week between when the legislation is signed into law and when the guidance is released, Robinson said. She said the agency began reading and analyzing the new laws, requested analysis documents from congressional partners and started to develop some top-line communications.

Then, once that guidance was released, multiple divisions in the agency worked together to interpret the guidance and propose legal, systematic and communication changes that needed to be made.

This happened in a series of meetings, and "once pathways are identified for every single piece of the product, the IT developers can begin writing code and mapping out the MiDAS system to run the program correctly," Robinson said.

A group of nearly 30 IT developers from the UIA, the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget and the agency's vendor Fast Enterprises worked on the new programs.

Working with legal and communications teams, "everything from verbiage displayed to how the accounting is connected on the back end of things must be developed and tested before product launch," Robinson said.

"More times than not, we must ask for program clarification based on the guidance and await a response from the U.S. Department of Labor before moving forward on certain pieces," she said.

Development time can take anywhere from one to four weeks, with testing ranging from a few days to two weeks.

Michigan roadblocks

Experts point to some unique circumstances in Michigan that may have slowed this process. Heading into the pandemic, it was already difficult to qualify for benefits. If filers were deemed eligible, they received fewer weeks than many other states, said Rachael Kohl, the director of the University of Michigan Law School's Workers' Rights Clinic, a free law clinic that helps claimants with issues with their jobless claims.

Early on, with her emergency powers, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended benefits to a maximum of 26 weeks, and made it easier for more claimants to qualify for benefits. Both those powers were invalidated in the fall, and the Legislature, while extending benefits temporarily, added back some red tape.

"They have made it harder and harder for people to access benefits," she said.

Furthermore, the then-director of the agency, Steve Gray, abruptly resigned in November, with the state giving no reason for his resignation. In his tenure, Gray dealt with a torrent of new jobless claims brought on by the pandemic, and a sharp increase in fraudulent attempts by criminals to get benefits.

O'Leary said a lot of the fallout would be mitigated if the federal government had more control of unemployment benefits, which would require more investment in the infrastructure.

"It could be one computer system that gives the government a lot of control over what states are doing," he said. "But then the states could fix the parameters to whatever their state systems are."

He said it wasn't difficult to predict that'd there'd be issues and delays with unemployment systems around the country when under pressure.

"When times are good, people don't pay attention to this," O'Leary said. "It's only when times are difficult. Now is when they pay attention to it."

Here are UIA answers to common questions

QUESTION: If I exhausted the 26 weeks of regular state benefits, the 11 weeks of PEUC and the 20 weeks of Extended Benefits (EB), am I eligible for the new PEUC extension?

ANSWER: Yes, if (you) are still unemployed, (you) can use the 11 additional weeks of PEUC once the program is fully restored this weekend.

Q: If I'm on PUA benefits, do I still have to prove employment?

A: Yes. Anyone who receives a payment for PUA after Dec. 26 must substantiate their previous employment. Claims filed before Dec. 26 will have 90 days from notification to submit documents. Those who filed a new PUA claim after Dec. 26 will have 21 days from notification. The agency is still programming these changes.

Q: Did Michigan opt into the Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation program?

A: Yes. MEUC provides an additional $100 per week in supplemental benefits to individuals receiving certain unemployment insurance benefits who received at least $5,000 of self-employment income in the most recent taxable year ending prior to the individual’s application for regular unemployment compensation. Individuals who receive PUA benefits are ineligible for MEUC benefits.

Q: What advice do you have for those still waiting on benefits?

A: Claimants should read any and all notices that are sent to them in their MiWAM (Michigan Web Account Manager) account’s correspondence tab to be informed about them and to know if any next steps need to be taken on their behalf.

Separately, unemployment advocates say claimants should look out for notices of overpayment and contact them or the state if they feel it was sent in error.

Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com. Sarah Alvarez is a reporter for Outlier Media, a non-profit journalism organization based in Detroit.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: After month of delays, Michigan unemployment agency says jobless can certify this weekend

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