JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMOX) - Thousands of Missourians have relied on unemployment benefits to make ends meet since the pandemic began. But now some state officials say that money needs to be paid back.
The state's Department of Labor says more than 45,000 people collected benefits they were not supposed to get – totaling more than $150 million, according to Missouri Department of Labor Director Anna Hui. Many Missourians received a surprise letter from the Missouri Division of Employment Security saying they had been ineligible for the jobless benefits and needed to repay thousands of dollars.
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Cindy Knitting, a school bus driver from St. Louis, says without unemployment benefits, she could not have made her house payments.
"I just want it known that we did nothing wrong," Knitting said, testifying in front of the house oversight committee on Monday. "We did every single thing that we were told to do and now we're just supposed to start flinging out money. I'm sorry, it's wrong."
Lawmakers from both parties indicated they would move forward to prevent the department of labor from taking back the money. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has argued it isn't fair to force people to pay back benefits paid to them in error in the middle of a pandemic.
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Unemployment offices around the country were slammed with a surge in unemployment applications when the first COVID-19 shutdown began last spring. Complicating the situation were new federal emergency unemployment programs established to extend jobless benefits and help self-employed workers who historically have been ineligible for unemployment benefits.
Jim Guest of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, a nonprofit legal clinic working with many people appealing state unemployment repayment demands, to the Associated Press that applicants were not “trying to game the system.”
“They were people applying for benefits they believed they were entitled to,” he told AP.