SACRAMENTO — After stealing the identities of death row inmates and even a sitting U.S. senator to make off with billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment benefits during the pandemic, scammers have now moved on to impersonating doctors to dupe California officials into giving them disability checks. State officials on...
Walters: California’s Unemployment Insurance Mess Laid Bare
The juxtaposition of events this week regarding California’s woebegone Employment Development Department (EDD) could not be more ironic. On Monday, Julie Su, a veteran labor union leader who heads the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, publicly acknowledged that EDD, one of the line departments she oversees, had failed miserably...
Walters: Employment Development Department Another Name for Titanic Disaster
“Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is an overworked cliché, but it certainly applies to California’s Employment Development Department. The name itself is a farce. There’s no evidence that EDD ever developed any jobs, other than employing thousands of bureaucrats to pay out unemployment insurance benefits — and that’s been...
Walters: Bad Optics Can Sink Political Careers
In real life politics, as opposed to the textbook variety, hard fact is much less important than image or, as political pros put it, “optics.” We had a stark lesson in that axiom this year when Donald Trump talked himself out of a second term as president. For months he...
As Concerns Over Unemployment Fraud Grow, Patterson Points to Auditor’s Warning
Fresno resident Amy Brooks said she was denied unemployment benefits months ago. But she has recently received 24 pieces of mail from the state's Employment Development Department. The letters all have her address but list a different name and Social Security number. At least three contain debit cards. “There’s no...
California Lawmakers Slam Employment Agency for Slow Payouts
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers accused the leader of the state's unemployment department of failing the public in a tense hearing Thursday that featured stories of people waiting weeks or months to receive their benefits after losing their jobs because of the pandemic. More than 1.2 million claims, about a fifth...
Fresno Unemployment Creeps Up. State Maintains Record Low.
Fresno County's unemployment rate rose to 6.5% in November, up from October's revised jobless rate of 5.8%, the state said Friday. Meanwhile, California's unemployment rate held steady at the record low of 3.9% in November. Listen to this article: Between October and November, the Fresno area shed 1,400 total...