California workers would see $ 400 extra in weekly unemployment benefits following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump – but to accelerate the money to the unemployed amid coronavirus-linked economic woes, Govin Newsom said Monday that the state $ 700 million cough cough a week.
The state would also have to reprogram a primitive EDD computer system that is already being chased by technical glitches such as freezes and glitches, as it rules out a tsunami of claims from workers who have lost their jobs due to company lures imposed by the government to to combat deadly bug.
The president has in recent days signed a series of executive orders that include a provision to add $ 400 a week to the normal benefits of unemployment, but the order also obliges states to pay $ 100 of that amount.
However, Newsom said Monday during a regular newsletter to discuss the state’s response to the coronavirus that California is too poor to come up with the 25 percent share of the extra $ 400 payment.
“The state does not have an identified source of $ 700 million a week that we have not already committed,” Newsom said. “There is no money in the piggy bank from the previous CARES transaction.”
The extra $ 400 would be a huge benefit for workers in California who have lost their jobs, adding to the average weekly benefit in the state $ 305. The maximum benefit without the supplement is $ 450.
The governor stressed that massive cuts would have to be made in other state programs to reach the California share of unemployment benefits.
“That would create a burden that a state, even as large as California, could not absorb,” Newsom said.
The governor also suggested that the EDD’s archaic computer system – based on a decades-old programming language called Cobol – might be under additional burdens if it had to be redesigned to meet a $ 400 payment.
“We would need to reprogram a system that is well defined as almost perfect at EDD,” Newsom said.
The EDD has estimated that it will take three to four weeks to reprogram their smart computer systems to shift from adding an extra $ 400 payment instead of the extra $ 600 in federal extra payments that ended in late July. The state would also have to look for a guaranteed source of funding.
“All of these burdens would create time delays and enormous consternation for millions of those who sought those benefits,” Newsom said.
However, the EDD has already caused a great deal of consternation on its own because of the failure of the state bureau to pay benefits immediately to an enormous chunk of the 7.31 million California workers who first filed unemployment claims between mid-March and August 1st.
The embedded state agency has filed a mammoth backlog of unpaid claims delaying payments to up to 1.13 million workers in California.
Newsom said California needs federal cash to meet the $ 400 payments. The governor – who has been seeking for months to repair the broken call centers and faulty computer systems on the EDD – said he did not want to launch into a new program that could suffer further glitches.
“I recognize the scale of the challenge and the burden we already have with our unemployment system,” Newsom said.
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