It was 2 am in the morning when I wrote this and I had been reading the news before heading to bed. It saddens me, on a number of levels, to see the Sacramento Bee story today with the headline

"California agency delays 119,000 unemployment checks."

You see, I am retired from the Employment Development Department and spent the last ten of my thirty plus years at EDD in the Unemployment Insurance program as an Employment Development Administrator at a Unemployment Insurance Field Office Call Center.

Certainly I know the frustration the public experiences when checks are late. I also know the frustration that the staff and management teams at an Unemployment Insurance Field Office has to deal with when checks cannot be issued timely. That is especially true when computer systems THEY IN THE FIELD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH requires them to deal with some very scared, and desperate, unemployed citizens of California.

CA Senator Dean Florez, who I recall earlier this year, was responsible for getting EDD to hire over 1000 staff when folks could not get through to a live employee on the phone. In the Bee article this morning he stated: "We've been getting tons of calls from people being forced to move out of their homes at a critical time of the year," said Florez, who blames it on EDD mismanagement."

"They've had ample time and ample resources to be able to handle these challenges," Florez said. "They're hiding behind veiled excuses."

If anyone can get to the bottom of this very public mess, Senator Florez can, and I am sure he will. He did it with the DMV computer mess a few years back, and the EDD phone busy signal/public access mess earlier this year. In fact, if there is one person in State Government that can get to the bottom of the computer issue and get it fixed, it is Senator Florez. He has that strong of track record of taking on issues that "somebody in the program, department, or agency" should had already taken care of!

My hope and prayer is that the public knows that the folks they call or receive calls from had nothing whatsoever to do with the computer/check situation. We do not need another situation as the one that occurred about a decade ago in Southern California when an upset individual came into an EDD Field Office with guns blazing.

Yes, my prayer is there is no repeat, and that the staff and managers remain safe. They have a very thankless job now and I know they are giving you, the public, their all.

So, give the folks you talk to on the phones at EDD a break. THEY want to get you your checks as badly as you want them.

The Legislature, with Senator Florez leading the way, will get to the bottom of this computer crisis, hopefully, given this economy, before the next extensions are due.

The LINK to the SACBEE story is here: http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2387258.html

A tip of the hat to Bee Reporter Andrew MacIntosh