‘Pending purgatory’: State to use more methods to verify people’s identity to process unemployment

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Florida’s unemployment system crumbled under a wave of new claims and, weeks later, many are still stuck in limbo.

The Department of Economic Opportunity will be using many more methods after this weekend to verify more than 230,000 people’s identities instead of just federal social security systems that Gov. Ron DeSantis could only process a thousand people a day.

The site’s shutdown, which is supposed to last until Monday, is also supposed to help with that.

According to Rep. David Santiago, it’s "a strategic decision ... so that (the DEO) could focus, this weekend on drastically reducing the number of pending cases. "

Read: Florida’s unemployment website is down, again, and will be for days as Floridians report waiting weeks for payments, processing

DeSantis said the staff will process more claims and make more fixes to the website, and shutting down connection should free up the server from people refreshing their accounts over and over, hoping to see the word pending turn to approved.

Some say the just want the system fixed.

″I don’t need a play-by-play of how they’re working it. I just need to know that they’re doing something and that we’re going to be able to afford our apartments and our car notes and whatnot soon," said resident Clari Alma.

How soon they’ll see their payment, however, is not clear.

Coronavirus In-Depth: Unemployment website problems persist for thousands Our continued coverage focuses on the unemployment issues the state is facing during COVID-19.

Eyewitness News spoke with dozens of people who applied as early as March 15 and as late as April 6.

The result is the same: A claim listed as pending.

For people like Clarisa Gomez, who gave up on the website and sent in paper applications instead, they’re not even sure they’re claim has even been received by the state.

“It’s upsetting. We don’t know what’s going on,” Gomez said.

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Of the 688,723 unique claims submitted since March 15, many are stuck.

“It’s been over four weeks, almost five weeks,” said Kevin Clendaniel, an employee at Kennedy Space Center and combat veteran. His claim was last listed as identity verification. As of Wednesday, he was one of more than 268,000 Floridians idling in that queue.

Rep. Anna Eskamani said the queue isn’t being cleared quickly enough.

“Verifying someone's identity should not take this long! People are sharing their private information with you, including Social Security Number,” she said. “When I go to the DMV or other places where my identity needs to be verified, it does not take this long. It really is inexcusable.”

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When asked what is required to verify identity for each claim, and how long each process should take for each claim, the agency didn’t say.

However, agency officials did say payments could be delayed if an individual provided incomplete or inaccurate information.

Clendaniel said he doubts that applies to him.

“I feel confident because of my wife, she assisted me. She used to work for the unemployment agency,” he said.

The DEO did confirm that people who have filed for unemployment before could receive benefits sooner than people who have never filed since their identities have already been verified.

But there are still a number of other issues, tying up hundreds of thousands of claims, such as verifying employers and wages, checking for possible fraud and investigating out-of-state claims.

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After those issues are handled, then a person’s application can be moved to “processed,” then moved to “paid.”

Florida has paid out 17% of its claims, the worst in the nation.

“That frustrates me because I would think that Florida's better than that,” Clendaniel said.

Three weeks ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered 2,000 state employees to work temporarily for DEO to help.

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