State officials will send letters to 10,500 people today who may be eligible to collect an additional 13 weeks of unemployment money, a week after Gov. Bill Ritter told the state Department of Labor and Employment to fix delays in getting money to the unemployed “with dispatch.”
A state law that took effect July 1 gave people collecting benefits an additional 13 weeks of unemployment insurance if they have already exhausted 59 weeks and still haven’t found work.
Because the state labor department has been inundated with claims, officials said it would take them until late August or September for payments to be made for the 8,000 to 10,500 people who may qualify for the benefits extension.
That was unacceptable to Ritter, who last week gave an order to department Executive Director Don Mares to make getting the additional benefits out to people a top priority.
“In some sense, it was very helpful to have my direct boss . . . at a high level prodding and pushing on this,” Mares said.
Mares said Tuesday he expects people to get extension payments in early to mid-August, rather than at the end of next month, but he noted the date is still “fluid.”
“Picking a date is very fluid. We really want the ability to be able to do this as soon as we can,” Mares said.
State labor officials believe up to 9,000 people who have run out of unemployment benefits could be waiting for the additional money.
The governor on Tuesday said he was “encouraged” by the department’s progress but said he’s going to keep the heat on Mares.
“I’m going to keep up the pressure to ensure that every Coloradan who is entitled to unemployment benefits gets them as quickly as possible,” Ritter said in a statement through his spokesman.
Ritter signed the law authorizing up to 20 more weeks of benefits for out-of-work Coloradans in June.
Right now, people who qualify would get 13 more weeks, but if the state’s average unemployment rate reaches 8 percent for three months, another seven weeks will kick in. Colorado’s rate stood at 7.5 percent at the end of the second quarter.
The unemployment-benefits money comes out of the state’s trust fund, but federal stimulus dollars will reimburse any benefits outside of the regular 26 weeks Coloradans got before the onset of the recession.
This week’s scramble at the Department of Labor and Employment comes at a time when that office is under fire for how it’s handling the thousands of jobless people seeking help.
People have complained to the governor and elected state officials that they can’t get through to call centers and the state’s computerized system keeps crashing.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 people are filing for unemployment benefits every week. Last June, that number was only about 2,000 people.
Linda Scarcella was laid off last year from a clerical job at a small company. She’s been looking for work for months and is now applying for jobs at McDonald’s and Wal-Mart.
She has received some unemployment benefits but has questions about whether she qualifies for more. Getting through to a human at the state labor office has been frustrating, she said.
“It’s just busy all the time,” she said. “I’m looking for work every day and the phone is just not ringing.”
In two to three weeks, state labor and employment officials will implement a new call system that will route people with specific questions and problems to state workers who can best answer questions, Mares said.
In October, the state will launch a website that will make it easier for people collecting unemployment benefits to access their information and manage their account, Mares said.
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an editing error, the story gave an
incorrect name for the Colorado Department of Labor and
Employment.
