SPRINGFIELD — The state agency charged with distributing unemployment benefits continued to fall short in administering claims filed during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving auditors unable to determine if more than $6 million wound up in the proper hands, according to a report released Thursday.
The report from Auditor General Frank Mautino’s office marked the latest criticism of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, which has come under scrutiny over the last few years for how it administered the distribution of unemployment benefits throughout the pandemic.
The auditor general’s office found that IDES failed to “maintain accurate and complete” data on more than 2,800 people who claimed $6.2 million in pandemic assistance money for the year ending June 30, 2023.
This money was provided to the state through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed into law in March 2020 by then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, as the pandemic began to take shape. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker initiated stay-at-home orders as a protective measure as the virus spread, and many businesses were forced to shut down or cut back on their operations.
The auditor general’s office requested IDES data to review whether the payments were going to the appropriate people. State law requires IDES to put in place “internal fiscal and administrative controls” to distribute its money and ensure that its resources are “safeguarded against waste, loss, unauthorized use and misappropriation,” Mautino’s office noted in its roughly 50-page report.
“Although the claimant data was provided, the data required considerable manipulation in order to make the data auditable and organized,” the report stated. “Therefore, we were unable to determine if the data was complete and accurate. As a result, we were unable to conduct detailed testing to determine whether the claimants were entitled to benefits.”
The report also noted that IDES management has indicated its system for distributing the unemployment funds had limitations due to time constraints “with starting up the system during the pandemic, and data errors resulted in the weaknesses.”
According to the report, Mautino’s office recommended IDES implement controls to ensure the data from those making claims was complete and accurate.
In its response, also included in the report, IDES accepted the recommendation and noted that its system is “time-limited due to the close-out of the federal pandemic programs.”
“The Department continues to focus on data controls for ongoing programs and emergency planning and preparedness,” IDES said in its response.
While indicating ongoing problems at IDES, the report’s conclusions are minor when seen against a scathing evaluation of IDES publicized last year by Mautino’s office that found the agency paid out more than $5 billion in fraudulent or excessive unemployment claims over a period that covered fiscal years 2020 through 2022.
At the time, the auditors noted those figures could be understated because they were merely estimates and IDES had been trying to account for all the fraudulent payments. Among the missteps in that report were millions of dollars sent to people who were either in prison or dead.
At an unrelated event Thursday, Pritzker said he hadn’t seen the latest auditor general report and couldn’t comment. But he said the sheer volume of claims during the pandemic created disruption not just at IDES but at similar agencies nationwide.
“If it’s covering the years of the pandemic, then they should take into account the fact that all across the country, because there was such a huge influx of applications for unemployment … everybody’s employment security departments across the country were having trouble keeping up,” Pritzker said.
In a statement, an IDES spokesperson said shortcuts were taken as the agency worked to rapidly implement the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which was separate from the department’s regular unemployment programs and controls. IDES also said it stopped working with the vendor for the program in August.
“The urgent need to get this program up and running and benefits out to impacted workers did not allow time for normal program design, testing, and reporting functions that programs of this magnitude should and would normally have,” the statement said.