WASTED AWAY

New York Made $11 Billion in ‘Improper’ COVID Unemployment Payments

An audit blamed the Department of Labor’s outdated unemployment insurance system.

In an audit released Tuesday, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that more than $11 billion in “improper” payments had been made during the pandemic, likely due to the state Department of Labor’s outdated unemployment insurance system. The state made an unprecedented 281 million unemployment payments from April 2020 to March 2021, totaling $76.3 billion. But the audit found that the department was advised to replace their unemployment insurance system yet never did. That, combined with the use of “ad hoc workarounds,” created “weakened oversight and ultimately contributed to an estimated billions of dollars in improper payments,” DiNapoli said. The surge of unemployment claims overloaded the department, allowing fraud and abuse to proliferate, DiNapoli added According to POLITICO, the department has “already” started working on fixing the system via a four-year modernization plan.