Kansas Labor Secretary Delia Garcia has submitted her resignation, and Governor Laura Kelly has announced steps to deal with the volume of claims for unemployment insurance that the Labor Department has struggled to deal with during the coronavirus pandemic.
Garcia submitted her resignation Monday, and the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Ryan Wright, will serve as the acting secretary until a permanent candidate is nominated for appointment. Governor Kelly will also bring in specialists to look for ways to improve the response times for Kansas who are applying for jobless benefits. The team will also work on new processes to manage the caseload.
On June 10th, duplicate payments were made to more than 4,500 people who filed claims for unemployment assistance and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation. The duplicate payments added up to around $7 million, and the Labor Department began a process called a “clawback” to try to reverse the payments. That caused recipients bank accounts to be overdrawn. KDOL is working with banks to identify and reimburse any recipient who was affected by the clawback.
Governor Kelly expressed thanks to Garcia for her service, and said she had inherited an agency that had its funding, technology and staff gutted by the previous administration. The governor said state government employees in Kansas and around the country have been asked to deal with an unusually high volume of activity, and the state has a responsibility to get things done right. She said steps will be taken to improve response time to Kansans and build a system that will prepared for further economic impacts.
