Even as coronavirus infection, hospitalization, and death rates crater, record numbers of Louisianians are still seeking unemployment assistance. To help understand what Congress has (or has not) done to help, what’s in the American Rescue Plan, and where the state government is jumping in to fill the gaps, Newell spoke to Louisiana Workforce Commission Secretary Ava Dejoie Tuesday morning.
“Let's jump right in on this - I've received a number of texts over the past week about the website being down,” Newell began. “ Is that still the case?”
“Yes, this is a planned takedown of the site,” Dejoie confirmed. “The American Rescue Plan passed on March 11th and the president signed it into law on March 13th, which was also the day that many of the provisions in CARES 2 were set to expire. So programming was ongoing and we were doing testing once we knew the parameters but without the official guidance -just saying, this is an extension with $300. What we discovered in the course of testing is that we were going to run into some of the same challenges we had before - simply putting in a new end date of September 6th was going to prompt people to have to open new claims when in fact they did not need to, and not wanting to have that to happen again, and have a lot of confusion around that, we made the decision to say, let's pause. People will still get paid this week, we will still have people to be able to certify their claims this week, but it will not prompt people to do the wrong things. In taking this extra time, we want to make things more seamless, more functional, and have less of the issues that often occur when you're rushing.”
“Do you have an anticipated date that it will be brought back up?”
“No later than Wednesday at noon,” Dejoie answered. “Everyone will be able to file through Saturday of this week. What we have done on the website is put a message up that you will have the opportunity to file, and we will then pay you after you do your weekly certification. Most people that have automatic direct deposit going into their bank accounts, it's set up, they will see it on their normal schedule. Sometimes that is the next business day, or the day after, but no one will miss a week of payment.”
“I know a lot of people were concerned about that. When you put the rule out, they want to follow it, right?” Newell asked.
“The team and I were all involved in testing on Saturday, and just knowing that we had anticipated this, we didn't want to go back and say to folks, well, we've said this to you, but you got a message when you filed,” Dejoie continued. “One of the challenges in it, and it's something that Congress will have to probably fix, is that the number of weeks for PUA and FPUC, with them being extended to 79 and 53 weeks - that is past the end date of September 6th. We're making the assumption that September 6th will be the last cutoff date that we have as it relates to extended unemployment benefits, and then where it comes into filing a new claim, or where that would prompt individuals to file a new claim, is previously PUA was 50 weeks. So if you were coming up on that 50 weeks of PUA or 24 weeks of PUC for those that had already exhausted their 26 weeks of state UI, you would be prompted to file a new claim when in fact that is not what you need to do. We're just going to extend this existing claim. We don't want to have people to go back through the entire process that you then would be prompted to do normally in the system when you file a new claim.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.