By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
RUTLAND HERALD
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont Legal Aid is suing the state Department of Labor in a class-action lawsuit, claiming the department is taking too long to hear appeals on decisions regarding unemployment benefits.
The lawsuit was filed in Washington County Superior Court last week. It names Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington and the Department of Labor as defendants. It lists Kelly Murphy, of Barre; Roseanne Simanavage, who is without permanent residence; Jennifer Turco, of Ludlow; and Joshua Webb, of Burlington, as plaintiffs.
The complaint asks the court to order the Department of Labor to hear “First Level Appeals” for unemployment benefit claims within 30 days of when the appeal was filed, per state law.
According to the complaint, more than 600 appeals have been pending for more than 30 days, with an average wait time of between five and six months.
These are “First Level Appeals,” filed after a claimant has been denied benefits by a claims adjudicator. An appeals referee then has 30 days to hear the appeal. Benefits are suspended during this time. According to U.S. Department of Labor data cited by Vermont Legal Aid, in the third quarter of 2021, the average age of a pending First Level appeal in Vermont was 174.3 days, ranking Vermont 43rd out of 53 jurisdictions in terms of wait times.
“Unemployed Vermont workers face crushing poverty as they wait months for their First Level Appeal hearings,” reads the complaint. “Requiring Plaintiffs to wait months to access benefits to which they may be entitled undermines the purpose of the unemployment compensation system — to quickly provide replacement of lost wages to workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.”
Vermont Legal Aid claims it has been pressuring the Department of Labor on the wait times since January and was given assurances by the department over the summer that progress would be made on the issue by September.
“Many of our clients were wrongfully denied unemployment compensation, wrongfully terminated from their unemployment compensation, or wrongfully issued huge overpayment notices,” stated Kelli Kazmarski, a VLA attorney assigned to the Poverty Law Project, in a news release. “These delays are violating not only state law, but also Vermonters’ due process rights. People are waiting months and months without benefits just to be heard before these errors can be corrected. That’s simply unacceptable.”
She stated that VLA had sympathy with the DOL last year because of the sheer volume of unemployment claims coming through.
“It was easy to see how the backlog began but I think we believe at this point, this far along into the pandemic, that the department has really not given this problem the priority it deserves and that’s why we’re still seeing such long wait times,” she stated. “We believe there should have been more attention, more resources given to this problem and that’s why we turned to the courts, we felt like we had no other option.”
Dirk Anderson, general counsel for the state, said Monday he couldn’t comment on a specific court case, but could say that the main reason for there being a backlog on appeals is because so many unemployment claims were filed, it naturally led to a high number of them being appealed.
“We’ve been trying to staff the unit by hiring temporary staff in limited service positions,” he said. “We’ve had limited success there. We have brought on new people, but then we’ve also had people leave.”
He said the state is having the same trouble many are having across the country with finding qualified labor. While a law degree isn’t a necessity for hearing these appeals, it’s very difficult to do for someone with no legal background, and there are stringent federal standards that must be met in how the appeals are conducted, he said.
“We’re working our way through the backlog, we do anticipate we’ll eventually get back to where we need to be hopefully sometime this winter, but it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.
keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com
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