Wasting Time at the Governor’s Commission on Waste, Fraud and Abuse

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The Progressive

Wasting Time at the Governor’s Commission on Waste, Fraud and Abuse
By Rebecca Kemble, August 23, 2011

At the conclusion of Tuesday morning’s session of Governor Scott Walker’s Commission on Waste, Fraud and Abuse, commission member state representative Mark Pocan noted: “Our time could be better served.” Pocan is one of two elected Democrats on the commission that also includes two elected Republicans, a deputy secretary in the Department of Administration, and two business owners. The commission is charged with finding $300 million in savings for the state.

Top administrators from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development in charge of Unemployment Insurance gave testimony at today’s meeting, as did Bill G. Smith, state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

Craig Barkelar and Andrea Reid of the DWD Division of Unemployment Insurance discussed the issue of fraudulent claims, which amount to 1.3 percent of all claims. They noted that they are able to recover 78 percent of those funds through deductions from future payments and wage garnishments. Observing that unemployment claims are not funded by the state but rather are funded directly by employers and the federal government, they wondered why their agency was the focus of this commission.

A great deal of their testimony focused on their diminishing capacity to handle an explosion of work since the recession hit in 2008. From working with databases housed on “a twenty-five-year-old mainframe computer that is just garbage” to having more than 100 permanent positions cut over the past six years despite a nearly fourfold increase in unemployment claims, the story the DWD administrators told was one of having to be more productive with fewer and fewer resources.


http://www.progressive.org/walker_waste_commission.html