Resignation of Kansas Department of Labor Secretary

This week the KDOL Secretary Delía García resigned from her position. The Governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Ryan Wright, will now serve as acting Secretary of Labor until a permanent replacement is found, according to KWCH 12 News.

García’s resignation came after weeks of struggles processing unemployment claims during the COVID-19 outbreak.

On Monday Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced several actions to address the issues impacting the Kansas Department of Labor’s ability to handle the recent volume of unemployment insurance claims.

“As Governor, I’m responsible for KDOL’s handling of unemployment claims. I am taking immediate action to ensure Kansans who are out of work, through no fault of their own, are getting the assistance they need,” Gov. Kelly said in a press release, going on to thank García for her service to Kansas.

During the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, Kansans trying to file unemployment claims were met with busy signals on the helpline, long waits to talk to service representatives, website crashes and delayed payments. Kansas eventually moved to a gating system to try and reduce the burden on the unemployment system, according to KMBC 9 News.

Kelly also said duplicate payments were made to more than 4,500 claimants of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and some Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) claimants for a total of about $7 million.

Without consulting Kelly, KDOL began attempting to reverse the duplicate payments in a process known as a “clawback,” according to reporting from KMBC. Kelly said the clawback caused some PUA and FPUC recipients’ bank accounts to be overdrawn.

Kelly said she will also bring in specialists to look for ways to improve response times for Kansans applying for UI, implement new processes to manage the caseload and mitigate future backlogs and errors that have occurred while attempting to deliver payments.