RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia has begun paying unemployment benefits to some of the tens of thousands of people whose claims had previously been on hold - in some cases for many months - because they were awaiting a staff review.
State officials decided to go ahead and pay certain applicants while their claims make their way through the determination process. Payments started going out Tuesday night, according to a spokeswoman for the Virginia Employment Commission, which has been swamped with an unprecedented flood of applications amid the pandemic.
The move will certainly be a relief for many Virginians who had been waiting for help. But if the determination process finds a recipient was not due the money, they will have to pay it back.
“We’re doing this to try to resolve issues faster, and try to get people money faster. And … I just hope most of them qualify,” said Joyce Fogg, the commission spokeswoman.
Fogg said in an effort to address the backlog, which stretched back to July, the commission collected the cases of applicants who originally qualified for unemployment and were paid but then had their money stopped after something in their claim was flagged. The VEC broke that group down further based on the type of issue the claim was flagged for.
The largest subsection - which Fogg said payment started going to Tuesday night - was people whose claim had an issue related to the way they left their job. For instance, they may have been reported as having quit, which would only make them eligible for unemployment under certain circumstances.
The work of making that determination would fall to a deputy. The department currently has only 71 trying to make their way through approximately 70,000 claims pending adjudication, according to Fogg. About 44,500 individuals - who accounted for just over 50,000 of the claims - had been paid as of Thursday under the new process, Fogg said. Some individuals had made multiple claims. Work is expected to continue quickly on the remainder, moving next to people whose cases were flagged for a refusal to return to work, she said.
In October, The Virginia Mercury first reported that the state ranked worst in the nation for quickly processing claims that require a staff review.
On Nov. 6, the Legal Aid Justice Center, Legal Aid Works, Virginia Poverty Law Center and other pro bono partners sent a letter to the commission asking that they fix problems with the unemployment insurance program or face a class action lawsuit.
“We are very pleased that VEC is taking these proactive steps. These benefits are a lifeline for Virginians who are unable to work due to the pandemic,” Pat Levy-Lavelle, an attorney with the the Legal Aid Justice Center who has been helping clients with unemployment issues, wrote in an email.
Bill Walton, deputy commissioner of the VEC, said the change was not made in response to the threat of the lawsuit. Walton said the commission had been trying to find a way to address the backlog for months and made the change after recent conversations with other states and after reviewing guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Fogg said the commission does not have an estimate for how many of the people currently being paid out are actually due the compensation.
“We won’t know until they go through adjudication,” she said.
Walton said the department will work with anyone who has to repay the money to set up an “accommodating” repayment process. The commission is warning recipients through both mailed letters and a text messaging campaign that they may end up being overpaid and also may be required to pay any costs, fees and interest associated with the overpayment if the issue ends up being sent to collections.
The commission will not be paying out any claims that are awaiting a determination after being flagged for fraud, said Megan Healy, who serves in Gov. Ralph Northam’s cabinet as his chief workforce advisor. She said there are about 40,000 such claims.
One client of Levy-Lavelle’s, Crystal Clifton, said Friday she hoped she would be among the group receiving the new payments, although she had not gotten any money or notification so far.
Clifton, 55, said she signed up for unemployment in March at her boss’s urging, leaving her job at a southwest Virginia restaurant because she has hypertension and stage two chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which she said made it difficult to breathe normally and almost impossible to do so while wearing a mask. She said she could not afford the oxygen she was supposed to use.
Clifton said she received benefits for about two months before they were abruptly halted in May and flagged for a review.
“I’m getting ready to lose everything,” said Clifton, who’s been warned her electricity will be shut off later this month.
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