Battle Creek Times

The Joint Oversight Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic met during the last week of June to listen to the testimony from the Unemployment Insurance Agency, after the agency was accused of failing to sufficiently fulfill its duties.

Rep. Julie Calley (R-Portland) spoke to UIA Director Steve Gray about the fact that Michigan residents have not been given the degree of attention that they require at this difficult time. 

“It’s my job, as it is everyone on this panel, to be the voice of their constituents,” Calley said in a video posted on Facebook by Rep. Matt Hall (R-Marshall). “And if I was to relay the voice of my constituents directly to you, I would break committee decorum because there would be a lot of expletives involved.”

Calley said that there is a great deal of frustration and desperation for individuals who are waiting to hear back about their applications. 

“That communication component is so key; people have been asking for it all along. When you came before us in May, we talked about meeting a deadline for that nonmonetary issue to be resolved,” Calley said, referring to the deadline by which people were supposed to have heard back from the UIA. “We wanted clear-cut deadlines as to when we could promise the people would hear back. Those timelines are critical.”

Calley said that the first timeline was issued on June 26.

Hall said that there was clearly a communication issue in the UIA. The fact that people want to hear back from the agency is absolutely acceptable and understandable. 

“There's two things that I use to measure whether this is improving or not: the first is the number of weeks it takes to get one of my constituents that calls me an answer. That started out at about two weeks, four weeks, now we’re at over five weeks,” Hall told the Committee. “The second way is that the calls and emails I get to my office decline. That hasn’t happened yet.”

Gray admitted that the UIA has been lacking in its communications practices and said that the agency was working with external groups to improve this area of operations.