When the president puts someone in charge of overseeing federal unemployment benefits, and the state program they were overseeing lost $600 million to fraud, it's kind of a problem, one reader writes.
Employment Security Department Commissioner, Suzi LeVine, released this statement on Monday, following the new federal stimulus measure being signed into law by President Trump on Sunday evening:
“We are grateful for this much-needed relief for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed Washingtonians who have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, especially those who were facing the loss of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits this week.
“With the hard work the team has been doing in anticipation of this legislation, we will be able to update our systems in time to ensure that most claimants receiving PUA and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) will not experience any gap in their benefits. However, we are still awaiting the necessary guidance from the United States Department of Labor (USDOL) to fully implement this new law. Therefore, some changes to the previous provisions, as well as additional benefits such as Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensa
Top 10 stories of 2020: Pandemic, shootings, wildfires hit Clark County by The Columbian
The SARS-COV-2 virus is incredibly small, but the reverberations of its impact on humanity dominated the events of 2020 and will linger for years.
There was never any question that the novel coronavirus pandemic is The Columbian’s and the world’s top story of 2020.
Clark County’s first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, was reported on March 7. Since then, it has sickened more than 12,000 people and taken the lives of more than 135 people.
It has shuttered businesses, reinvented learning and upended nearly every aspect of Clark County life.