LANSING, Mich., -- Michigan's newest Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) director is on tour around the state, visiting UIA locations as the agency tries to rebuild from a tumultuous period through the coronavirus pandemic.
Visiting a Saginaw UIA branch on Tuesday, Julia Dale acknowledged she's now 10 months into a job that most people don't make it a year into: the head of the state agency in charge of handling Michiganders facing unemployment.
It's no easy title, as history shows. Over the last 11 years, Michigan has had 11 UIA directors, and Dale was the third director over just the first year and a half of the pandemic.
The UIA has been plagued with fraud both outside of and within its own ranks. Most recently, three employees were charged after $1.6 million was stolen as part of an unemployment fraud scheme.
“You do hear the negative stories about those that we are going after and we’re holding accountable, but by far are some of the most resilient staff that I’ve ever met in my time with state government,” said Dale, who came to the UIA with over 20 years of experience in Michigan's government.
Dale says the agency has implemented new ethics policies and additional background checks, including fingerprinting that she said are more extensive than those required by other state agencies.
Staff have also seen an increase in training and job aids, Dale said.
The issues with the UIA, many claimants have described however, are more cultural or systemic, including what some have said is an apathetic approach to solving issues or a lack of urgency for claimants' needs.
Dale attributed part of that to the inconsistent leadership the agency has been facing for over a decade, and her hope is that new leadership can model behavior they want staff to carry out to claimants.
“Modeling that myself is, I think, the first step to making sure that that is an attitude and approach that trickles down throughout the agency,” she said.
Dale said the cultural shift comes from the kinds of interactions staff have with claimants, prompting the agency to create an online campaign encouraging claimants to book designated in-person or virtual appointments with staff. Dale said many of the appointments outside of southeast Michigan go unbooked.
“We know that when people have the opportunity to sit across the table from someone, look face to face, or across the screen, I think there’s a greater opportunity to feel heard and to be seen and to have the important dialogue necessary to get those benefits out the door,” she said.
Earlier this year, after a number of procedural issues, hundreds of thousands of Michigan claimants were told they had to pay back overpaid benefits. The state says it accidentally overpaid $3.9 billion in benefits. Since then, Dale has made a point to introduce more waivers that allow some Michiganders who were accidentally overpaid by the UIA to not have to pay back the agency.
“We are going step by step to evaluate different populations that might qualify for a waiver,” said Dale.
In the last year, according to the Department of Labor, the UIA has issued over 62,300 waivers and $484.2 million in overpayment has been waived. Most recently, at the end of July, nearly 400,000 claimants had their overpayments suspended.
Previous UIA directors have said they were caught off guard by the tsunami of jobless claims during the pandemic. To prevent being surprised again, Dale said the agency is working to rebuild the state's UIA trust fund, provide more training, and update the agency's website and communication to be more accessible.
Dale said she made a goal to visit all 13 UIA locations across Michigan before Labor Day in order to spend with staff at every office. Her final location, in Traverse City, will be visited ahead of her goal, Dale said.
As for her own consistent leadership in the agency, the director said she couldn't predict how long she would stay in the role, but she was proud to serve as long as she was able.
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