Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jackie Coleman are infinitely preferable to another Matt Bevin term, and thousands of lives have been saved already over what COVID-19 would look like in Bevinstan. But Beshear and Coleman have royally screwed up regarding Kentucky's unemployment system, which broke immediately in March and hasn't recovered with people still waiting on benefits from four months ago.
Like thousands of other Kentuckians over the last few months, Travis Powell just wanted a simple answer from the state Office of Unemployment Insurance.
Powell is not an unemployed worker; he’s vice president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, and he wanted to know what to tell state universities about how to handle unemployment claims from work-study students. On April 20, he was put in touch with Muncie McNamara, the executive director of the Office of Unemployment Insurance.
According to emails obtained through an open records request, McNamara said he’d look into it. After a week went by with no answer, Powell followed up again. McNamara never responded, and after another week, Powell learned why: McNamara was no longer working for the state.
The head of the Office of Unemployment Insurance was quietly fired on May 5, amid an unprecedented number of jobless claims, a race to overhaul an archaic computer system and a belatedly-reported data breach.
McNamara had been on the job only four months. The 38-year-old lawyer from Nelson County had no experience with unemployment systems or state government before taking the job.
But what he did have was connections.
He volunteered for and donated to Gov. Andy Beshear’s campaign last year. His wife, a recent chair of the Nelson County Democratic Party, considers Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman “a good friend,” according to an interview she gave to the Kentucky Standard. Coleman called McNamara to offer him the job personally, he said.
He was paid $15,000 more than his predecessor, a career unemployment official who the cabinet kept on staff as a special assistant.
But by early May, he was gone, fired “without cause,” according to his personnel file.
McNamara alleges he was fired for raising serious concerns about corners the office was cutting amid the rush to fulfill record-high unemployment claims.
In an emailed statement, the Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development disputed that claim, saying the concerns he raised were not a factor in his firing.
Travis Powell is still waiting for an answer to the question he asked McNamara on behalf of the state’s universities back in April. He said he’s happy to be patient. But for the over 68,000 Kentuckians whose claims have gone unresolved since the pandemic began — including over 5,000 who filed claims back in March — patience doesn’t pay the bills.
Everything that could have gone wrong with Kentucky's unemployment system did go wrong, and while a lot of it is inherited from Matt Bevin (and yes, from Andy Beshear's father Steve) it's pretty clear that treating the system as a plum to be given to a donor was just about the worst possible response from both Beshear and Coleman.
Beshear is trying to fix it, but at great expense, hiring Ernst & Young to provide the necessary experts to run the system. Don't get me wrong, a second Bevin term would have been just as bad on unemployment and lethal everywhere else, but Beshear and Coleman really screwed this up and so far they have not met this challenge.
Get this fixed, guys.
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