Allison Padua was heartbroken to leave Las Vegas during the pandemic, ending her 25-year gambling career.
But an autoimmune disorder kept her from returning to work as a dealer at one of the Strip’s newer casinos, and months of fighting with the Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation (DETR) over unemployment benefits left her broke with no choice but to moving with his family to his Midwestern hometown.
“I love the job. It’s just meeting people and dealing cards, which is fun for a living. What more could you want?”. said Padua, an employee since day one at the Cosmopolitan.
But after three years of disputing multiple claims from Nevada saying he had been overpaid by more than $46,000 in 2020 and 2021 unemployment benefits, Padua said moving was the only option left for him.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, DETR was inundated with an unprecedented number of jobless claims – the state’s unemployment rate peaked at 30.6 percent in April 2020. Added to the demand for benefits was the launch of new programs related to the pandemic, such as the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) for self-employed workers. DETR paid nearly 8.1 million weeks of unemployment benefits in 2020 alone, according to the Labor Department.
Last year, DETR claimed to have overpaid in unemployment benefits during the pandemic: a whopping $1.4 billion. More than half of the estimated overpayments were not attributed to fraud, the state agency said.
Late last year, the agency began sending notices to more than 150,000 Nevadans requesting their money back. As of Aug. 10, the agency has recovered $21.5 million in PUA overpayments and about $745.3 million in traditional unemployment insurance, he said.
This spate of overpayment notices – part of an attempt to recover lost money – has fueled a backlog of incomplete appeals, with more than 26,000 claims still awaiting hearings and final decisions. Meanwhile, Nevadans say they are frustrated by the slow process, which can leave them owing thousands of dollars to the state long after the money is spent.
Delay Details
DETR said about 25,000 traditional unemployment insurance claims and 1,200 PUA claims make up its current appeals backlog, mostly made up of requests for reconsideration of denied claims or overpayment determinations.
This backlog has been reduced since Director Chris Sewell spoke to the Nevada Legislature about the agency in February. At the time, the agency was dealing with 13,000 initial determination cases and 33,000 appeals. Sewell told lawmakers that the first backlog would take six months to process. In a recent interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sewell estimated that the backlog would be resolved “by US Department of Labor standards” around August 21.
Sewell said his intent is for the department to clear the backlog by the end of the year.
“My biggest challenge is time,” he said. “I want to do it, I know the governor (Joe Lombardo) wants to do it. I am going to dedicate all the resources that I can to the appeal resources now that the adjudication is almost up to date, I will be able to transfer part of that system to the appeal resources ”.
To expedite the process, DETR hired Protiviti Government Services, an Alexandria, Virginia-based contractor, in March for $1 million, according to the state contract obtained through a public records request. Provider hearing officers are responsible for conducting hearings and writing recommendations to DETR, which is responsible for the final determination.
Staff are expected to hear and write about 23 cases a week, Sewell said. The state said it has 16 employees dealing with arrears and 13 contractors. They are assigned various tasks including hearing cases and writing decisions, while others are tasked with reviewing contractors’ drafts.
At that rate, it would take the 29 employees until mid-May to resolve all 26,000 cases, according to rough estimates in the Review-Journal.
Protiviti is one of several contracts the department has entered into to process and resolve unemployment insurance-related work since the start of the pandemic. Three other vendors received contracts totaling $49.4 million, according to records.
‘David vs Goliath’
Despite the help earmarked for the backlog, many Nevadans report frustration with the lengthy and sometimes confusing appeals process. Nevada Legal Services senior attorney Elizabeth Carmona said her nonprofit legal aid group spends about half of her work dealing with unemployment cases, handling every level of appeal in the department and in court. .
Carmona said that the process can be long and difficult for a person without legal training. One client fought a denial of benefits for two and a half years, 18 months of which she was waiting for a district judge’s decision on the petition for judicial review, or a step challenging DETR’s decision in court. He estimates that the case took 60 hours of his time.
“Decisions about credibility are made by arbitrators who are in favor of businessmen,” he explains. “It really looks like a David vs. Goliath situation, where we’re just up against this gigantic organization and we have to fight and keep appealing, using our time and resources to fight denials that really aren’t appropriate in the first place. They are really exhausting cases to carry.”
Some Nevadans refuse to go to court because of the effort involved. Sarah Spandrio, a Henderson resident, was denied PUA after receiving about six months of unemployment benefits. Her former employer, a property management company, said she left for reasons unrelated to COVID-19, for which the state asked her to return $20,062 in October 2020.
“I cried,” Spandrio says. “I thought, how am I going to try to get through this, especially when I’m not working and my kids are at home studying on Zoom?”
Spandrio got his appeal date in April 2021, fighting the decision until a review board in December 2021. He received letters from DETR explaining his eligibility for PUA benefits all along, according to correspondence provided to the Review-Journal. , confusing her even more.
Years later, Spandrio is still feeling the effects of Calvary. In October 2021 she filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy to deal with debt, causing her to lose a credit score she was proud of and forcing her to give up a vehicle.
Despite the path set to deal with his balance, Spandrio said he is still afraid.
“It’s been just devastating every time I get something from EmployNV.com,” Spandrio said. “I fear seeing anything of them again. But I don’t consider this to be over until my bankruptcy case is discharged. All it does is feel like they’re on my shoulder.”
Lack of communication causes frustration
Other Nevadans describe a confusing communication network that makes them wonder if their fight will ever end. Letitia L’Heureux, a Las Vegas resident and small business owner, received PUA benefits during the pandemic, but the state sent her a letter in December 2022 saying she had been overpaid by nearly $22,000 in two separate claims . She appealed both, and the agency said they would hear both together, according to official communications she shared with the Review-Journal.
L’Heureux’s appeal was heard at the end of May. Although he had already filed his 2019 tax returns, the appeals referee said the agency needed his tax transcripts, a document that can be requested from the IRS. His balance was paid off about a week after he sent the transcript.
“I felt like it was a big extortion plot,” he said. “The way they presented it was based on fear. There was no information beforehand that could have been clarified quickly. It was just a fear-based tactic.”
L’Heureux thought that his relationship with the agency was over. But, after consulting her online benefits portal when a reporter called her, she realized that the State had not grouped the two applications. In June, the agency posted a statement on the website – without any additional email or letter – informing her that she had to pay the remaining $5,600.
“They scare me because it is very difficult to fight even when you are on the right side,” he said. “Just getting someone to understand you or even listen to you, to know what’s going on, is impossible.”
The experience has led L’Heureux and other interviewees to describe the agency as “incompetent”. But Sewell pushed back on that criticism, saying his staff is working through an unprecedented backlog and a problem he inherited from the previous administration under former Gov. Steve Sisolak.
“They (Nevadeners) are frustrated and I understand that,” Sewell said. “But I have to serve them on a first-come, first-served basis. Once they have your appeal filed, they will be heard. I’m going to try to get through that as fast as I can, and that’s where we are now.”
