Unemployment Benefit System – California

Stalled upgrade delays unemployment checks, By Tom Abate, January 19, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle: “At a time when nearly 800,000 jobless Californians depend on timely unemployment checks, the state has been sitting on more than $50 million in federal funds set aside in 2003 to upgrade antiquated computer and call center systems designed to make the Employment Development Department more responsive. State officials acknowledge that this delay helps explain why it took the department five weeks last year to resume payments to Californians who had exhausted their benefits before Congress authorized a payment extension in November. Ironically, the department already has begun to spend some of the $60 million in federal funds that it received just last spring to modernize other unrelated portions of the ’70s-era software that runs the state’s unemployment systems…”