Commissioner Defends Employment Security Commission's Handling of Benefits Money

One of the state's three Employment Security Commissioners, all of whom Gov. Mark Sanford is threatening to fire, says the agency is not "grossly mismanaged" or "out of control", as the governor contends. McKinley Washington has been a commissioner for 8 years.

The governor criticized the agency in a January 22nd news conference after it requested another $170 million loan from the federal government to allow it to keep paying unemployment benefits. Just three weeks earlier, it had requested a $146 million loan, which was supposed to allow it to keep paying benefits through March. But it was now telling the governor that the state would run out of money to pay unemployment benefits on January 23rd without more federal money.

Gov. Sanford refused to ask for the $170 million, but did request a $25 million loan, which should keep benefits checks flowing through the first week of February. He's asking the Employment Security Commission for more information about who's unemployed and why, so the state can better target resources to the people and areas of the state that need it the most. He's also calling for an independent audit of the agency and is criticizing it for the way it has managed the unemployment insurance trust fund.

Washington says the agency is working on getting the governor most of the information he's asking for, but won't be able to provide all of it because of federal privacy laws. He also says the agency had no way of knowing the amount of money it would need for unemployment benefits would jump so quickly. When it first made the loan request, he says the agency was paying out between $9 million and $11 million a week in unemployment checks. In just three weeks, that jumped to $16-17 million, then jumped again to about $19 million.

"We have been losing jobs like mad in the last few weeks," Washington says. "And, as a result, these folks who have applied, because of the numbers, we couldn't have known that. The governor couldn't have known that. Our economic advisors in the state couldn't tell you what would happen 3 weeks from now the way the economy is going."

He says everyone expected more people to be hired for seasonal work during the Christmas season, but when that didn't happen, unemployment claims shot up.

Washington says he hasn't thought much about the governor's threat to fire all the commissioners if they don't give him the information he's asking for. Washington is a former state representative and senator. "No one has ever questioned my integrity, and the governor has done that, which we think was really, really bad for the governor to do that," he says.

The state's December unemployment numbers will be released Tuesday, January 27, and are expected to be above the 8.4 percent unemployment rate for November.