LANSING, MI (WSYM) - — Some Michigan lawmakers are calling for unemployment offices to open. Wednesday morning, Steve Gray, the director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency, spoke with the Joint Select Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic.
"We want to make sure that it's a safe place for the claimants that come in and for our staff, as well," said Gray.
"When you talk about safety, I understand and appreciate that, but when we hear don that Zoom call that that woman was facing an individual who was threatening suicide, that's not the first case we've heard. There are safety concerns in a wide variety of these issues," said Representative Julie Calley, (R), Portland.
"I really do feel like we need more local offices. At the end of the day, we can open local offices, but it's not that helpful if we have ten hour waits like they had in Kentucky," said Senator Curtis Hertel, (D), Lansing.
Legislators also pushed for an update on those accounts flagged for potential fraud. Gray says the agency has a team of 850 people dedicated to those cases. He says that's also impacting response time for other people.
"We had brought on all these staff, had them poised to get on the phones to help customers, and we had to divert them to this identity verification process," said Gray.
He did not know how many of those 340,000 cases were actually fraud, but said that 58,000 people reported fraud on their accounts.
The chair of the COVID-19 Pandemic committee, Representative Matt Hall, says the UIA is not communicating enough with lawmakers, the media and the people they're serving.
"I believe most people can accept and understand that things happened in Michigan which overwhelmed the system and that the system was not prepared for this kind of surge. What people are struggling to accept and understand is the lack of communication from the agency to get this right," said Rep. Hall.
Tuesday, Gray announced the agency's goal to have all unpaid claims filed before May 1 resolved by July 4.
