Illinois and Minnesota Issued Timely UI Appeals Decisions 70% Of The Time, Wisconsin Only Reached 17.5%
14,500 Appeals Are Still Waiting For A Decision
By Lexi Dittrich
The Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) released a report last week revealing that the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) is still mismanaging the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) program and they’re failing to meet the federally required deadline for making decisions on most of their appeals cases.
“We found that DWD did not comply with federal regulations to issue appeal decisions in a timely manner from June 2020 through May 2021,” LAB wrote. The federal government requires that at least 80% of states’ appeal decisions be made within 45 days of receiving the appeals requests. LAB found that only 17.5% of DWD’s appeals decisions made in May 2021 were made within 45 days of receiving the requests.
DWD: Unemployment backlog could be cleared by year s end
DWD: Unemployment backlog could be cleared by year’s end
Wisconsin s Department of Workforce Development officials were grilled by state lawmakers over blocked calls, busy signals and delays in processing unemployment claims.
MADISON, Wis. - Backlogged unemployment claims could be gone by the end of 2020. That’s what a top state official told lawmakers at the Wisconsin Capitol Wednesday, Dec. 16, but when FOX6 s Bryan Polcyn tried to ask her questions, she walked away.
After delivering potentially great news to state lawmakers, Amy Pechacek wanted nothing to do with FOX6 s questions.
Audit reveals DWD waited weeks to resolve UI claims
An audit suggests hundreds of thousands of unemployment benefit applications could have been processed much faster, as the agency tried to contend with an unprecedented number of claims amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Legislative Audit Bureau report found that the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development sent 77-percent of unemployment applicants into pending status when the claims could have been processed.
The audit found that 514,000 of nearly 663,000 claims were put into adjudication over a seven-month period, in order for the department to determine if applicants were eligible. Some of those people were left in adjudication for ten weeks or more. More than 96,000 were still in adjudication at the time the audit was conducted.