OKLAHOMA CITY – Several measures have been implemented to clear the massive backlog in unemployment claims, the acting director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission said Monday.
For example, an unspecified number of Tier 2 agents will be “moving to the front line” as Tier 1 agents, Shelley Zumwalt said. Tier 1 agents answer initial calls for assistance in filing an unemployment claim, while Tier 2 agents are “people with the knowledge to resolve problems with a claim,” said Zumwalt, who was appointed acting director just recently.
“Tier 1s are people who can answer basic questions,” Cyndi Phillips, the OESC’s chief of staff, told the Ledger last month. “If they need more detailed information and actually have to look inside their claim, they have to go to a Tier 2 person.” Tier 2 agents “can actually go into the system and look at a person’s claim, make changes to it, etc.”
There are fewer Tier 2’s “so it takes more time to get a call back from them,” Phillips said.
“This is not a silver bullet,” Zumwalt said. However, “You will be able to get hold of someone who can help you.”
Another change is intended to correct the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance buttons, said Zumwalt, who assumed the agency’s top administrative job just last week. “I have heard it so many times from so many people” that the website’s PUA buttons do not load, she said. “Our change will fix this.” Along with the buttons, an icon will inform the claimant ‘application loading’.
EFFORTS UNDERWAY TO CLEAR BACKLOG(S)
OESC personnel cleared 29% of the claims backlog, in part by working last weekend, Zumwalt said. However, it was unclear which particular backlog was resolved.
For example, on April 21 the OESC had 45,000 claims that were approved but awaiting payment of the claimants’ benefits. At the same time, almost 200,000 claims for unemployment benefits had been denied.
A denied claim is one in which the applicant was not eligible for regular unemployment insurance “for a variety of reasons,” agency spokesman Trey Davis said.
• The claimant may have been fired, voluntarily quit, or the employer protested on other grounds and the claim was adjudicated as not monetarily eligible.
• The claim may have been fraudulent and denied.
• The claimant may not be eligible for regular unemployment insurance benefits but had to submit an application to the OESC first before applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. These include gig workers, independent contractors and other self-employed individuals.
“There are claims that will be denied,” Zumwalt said Monday. “Those people can apply for PUA and we will work with them to expedite their claims.”
An applicant whose claim was denied may be able to revive it with the assistance of a Tier 2 claims agent. “It’s certainly possible that inaccurate or incomplete responses resulted in the claim being denied,” Davis said. However, the applicant “may have to go through the adjudication process, which can take several weeks based on the current caseload.”
“Some claims have unique problems,” Zumwalt said.
FRAUDULENT CLAIMS BEING INVESTIGATED
Jerry Moore, the state’s chief information officer, wrote recently about discovering that more than 80,000 claims were suspected of being fraudulent because they had invalid area codes for telephone numbers.
Payments were blocked on those suspicious claims, but not before 41,087 of them received weekly payments that totaled $17.4 million in one week, Moore wrote in an email. A task force comprised of the OESC, the state Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating those applications, Davis said.
A report issued recently by the U.S. Secret Service indicated several states, including Oklahoma, were targeted by a Nigerian fraud ring. “I suspect many of these are part of that investigation,” Davis said.
By May 16, the OESC’s fraud unit had identified 14,856 fictitious claims. “These claims are apart from those being investigated by the task force,” Davis said. “Most of these are from employers notifying OESC the claim is fictitious or from individuals notifying OESC they had not filed an application for unemployment benefits,” he added.
Zumwalt was tapped to replace Robin Roberson, who had been the OESC director for just a few months when she resigned under pressure May 22.