California’s Unemployment Fiasco Takes Surprising Turn: Bank of America
California’s unemployment fiasco takes a surprising turn. Bank of America, which has had an exclusive contract with the state to deliver unemployment benefits through prepaid debit cards since 2010, wants to end the contract, despite the fact that the Employment Development Department just renewed it for another two years.
Just How Dysfunctional Is California’s Unemployment Department?
The announcement comes a month after a federal court ordered Bank of America to cease employing an automatic fraud filter that stopped tens of thousands of genuine claimants from obtaining their benefits after reporting questionable account activity. From October 2020 to March 2021, the bank received 230,000 debit card fraud claims.
Both the bank and the state get merchant fees when an unemployed debit card is swiped. EDD received more than $47 million from March 2020 to April 2021, even though 1.1 million unemployed Californians’ claims remain pending.
Bank of America told state legislators it lost “hundreds of millions” on the deal last year as it hurried to react to California’s massive unemployment fraud, which might reach $31 billion.
Bank of America
“We’ve told the state we want out of this company shortly.”
California taxpayers will likely pay for unemployment fraud. California’s unemployment insurance debt might exceed $26.7 billion this year, warn experts. Businesses will likely pay this large sum.
EDD still struggles to answer the millions of calls it gets each week; California’s 80 state assemblymembers were were granted permission to recruit two workers apiece to tackle EDD difficulties.
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A judge’s provisional verdict Tuesday says California may preserve its regulations allowing 76,000 offenders to cut their sentences. The ruling is a temporary reprimand to Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a 2022 attorney general candidate who sued Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration with 43 other district attorneys. Prosecutors alleged the new California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation policy violated state law and threatened public safety. Newsom advocated positive prisoner conduct.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Rob Bonta formed a team to examine officer-involved shootings that kill unarmed individuals and sued Google for breaching state and federal antitrust rules.
2. CA Considers Sterilization Reparations
On July 5, 2021, in Azusa, Stacy Cordova holds a portrait of her aunt Mary Franco. Jae C. Hong/AP Thousands of women forcibly sterilised by California’s government might get up to $25,000 apiece after Newsom passes the $263 billion budget. The budget allocates $7.5 million for a reparations programme that might help 600 women. Of the more than 20,000 individuals California sterilised under a eugenics statute, the great majority are deceased. Even after the state overturned its eugenics statute in 1979, 148 women were sterilised in state jails without consent, according to CIR.
California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task team will meet again on Friday to discuss how to recompense African Americans for slavery and its ongoing impacts.
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