SACRAMENTO — Tens of thousands of jobless Californians, rejected for unemployment benefits of up to $450 a week, are awaiting action by a state appeals board swamped with cases, hindered by delays, mired in bureaucracy and tinged with scandal.
Although the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board is supposed to decide within 30 days whether the state wrongly denied an individual's jobless benefits, less than 4% of complaints are finished by then, the U.S. Department of Labor says.
In all, a record 68,135 appeals filed by out-of-work people and employers were awaiting action by the board as of Jan. 23.
California takes longer to resolve unemployment appeals than any other state except Virginia, according to Labor Department data, and the federal government has demanded that the state come up with a plan to fix the mess this month.
State officials acknowledge that they are overwhelmed by the massive backlog. The number of those appeals has increased steadily since last summer as California's unemployment rate climbed to 9.3% in December, when 1.7 million Californians were without jobs.
"The workload has been horrendous because of the economic times we are facing," said Jehan Flagg, the board's acting executive director. She also blamed "mismanagement under the previous head of the organization" for a backlog that is now 81% higher than when she took over Aug. 1.
Critics partially blame the board's performance on the failure of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration to let the board hire enough people to handle cases in a timely manner -- even if the federal government pays the bill.
About 9 out of 10 appeals come from the newly unemployed who are denied benefits by the California Employment Development Department.
Applicants for unemployment assistance are turned down by EDD for many reasons. In some cases, EDD caseworkers determined that they voluntarily quit their jobs or were fired for alleged misconduct such as absenteeism or drinking on the job.
Others are denied benefits for incorrectly filling out application forms.
Employees won 44% of their appeals in 2008.
A much smaller number of employers appeal, arguing that their former employees should not receive benefits. They prevailed 36% of the time last year.
The mounting appeals backlog comes during a period when the appeals board also has been racked by internal strife that led to the firing of its executive director last summer and complaints of nepotism among staffers.
