Michigan Lame Duck Legislature
The Republican controlled House and Senate has been largely busy passing bills in the few days left in 2016. This particular one caught my eye.
Michigan had put in place a new Unemployment System (Michigan Data Automated System or MiDAS) to help in detecting unemployment fraud. With the passage of Senate Bill 1008 by the Republican led House, $10 million is transferred from the Unemployment Contingent Fund to the General Fund to be done with in the General Fund as determined by the Republican held Legislature.
Just a little history; MiDAS was put in place (2013) by Governor Rick Snyder of Flint, Michigan fame to automate the system away from the manual process. The system sends out a series of questions, which the Unemployment Applicant has to answer picking from listed answers. There is no room for explanation. The claimants chosen answers from the list of answers are then loaded into the MiDAS data base and notification is sent to the former employer who then confirms the answers the claimant has listed in the system. If there is any discrepancy, MiDAS assumes the claimant has committed a potential fraud.
Another questionnaire is then sent to the claimant, which is also limited to listed responses. If you do not respond in 10 days, it is assumed a fraud has been committed as determined by MiDAS. A notice is “supposedly” sent out and the claimant has 30 days to answer. If no notice is sent out and the claimant does not answer, MiDAS assumes fraud and the issue goes to collections where just about anything can take place to collect the unemployment funds already given to the claimant. There is little or no human interaction throughout the process and little can be done to explain circumstance during the process.
“The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, partly at the request of the federal government and partly on its own, reviewed 22,427 cases in which a computer determined a claimant had committed civil fraud between October 2013 and October 2015 and found that 20,965 of those cases did not involve fraud. Unemployment Insurance Agency spokesman Dave Murray said on Wednesday. That’s an error rate of more than 93%.”
The $10 million will be transferred from the Unemployment Contingent Fund which had already grown by 400% after the MiDAS caused spike in fraud cases of which nearly all of them unfounded. Senate Bill 1008 is balancing the state budget on the backs of innocent citizens wrongfully accused of false unemployment claims.
Governor Rick Snyder spent $47 million of taxpayer funds to install MiDAS which has been shown to be correct in determining fraud < 7% of the time. Rather than give the funds to those who were unjustly denied Unemployment Compensation by MiDAS, the Republican led Michigan legislature and Republican governor Rick Snyder are keeping much of it in the Unemployment Contingent (used to train workers and for rainy days) and will also transfer $10 million of it to the General Fund to help balance the budget. This is the same as using the additional Medicaid funding received from the expansion to balance the budget rather than set it aside for later years which would have kept Michigan from having to add to Medicaid funding till 2027. It too was used to balance the budget. By doing so in both cases, the Republicans do not have to raise taxes on the rich in income.
What? You mean to tell me that a conservative right wing republican controlled government is trying to eliminate or grossly reduce a valued safety net feature provided by government (public funds)?
What is the world coming to?
P.S. Did you perhaps think conservatives favor and support public funds use in safety nets for labor (as opposed to capital owner’s safety nets)? Whatever gave you that idea? Reagan’s “welfare queen” speech perhaps?
Actually, it is the failure of Snyder and the Repubs to acknowledge the error of “MiDAS” in swindling all Michigan citizens in general and have chosen to keep the funds they have swindled rather than acknowledge the error publically and give the funds to those hurt by “MiDAS.” Mistakes do happen and it would have been easy enough to fix by adding an area for explanation and in doing two mailings of the questionnaire to the Unemployment applicant. The state is attempting to eliminate people using a computer system which does not allow for applicant error and inturn is not 100% fool-proof in mailing out notification.
The state has already acknowledged that 93% of the time it has made an error and yet they have failed to reconcile it.
Run, if you want to correct problems like this; where error is a feature. Make it a criminal fraud to sell the state or federal government a program that the error rate is more than 4%.
The problem with that suggestion, Beene, is that fraud—criminal or civil—requires knowledge of falsity, or intent to steal. The idea of declaring a particular error rate a criminal fraud is a non sequitur; it’s absurd.
But selling a system that so clearly had no ability to accomplish its supposed purpose, and whose purpose seems to have actually been to simply kill the unemployment compensation program—and whose method was accusing virtually everyone of fraud who applied for unemployment compensation—does not appear to be mere incompetence. It does appear to be knowing—i.e., a fraud.
And I would think it is prosecutable. The Justice Dept. apparently hasn’t pursued the matter, and of course under Sessions it won’t. But two years from now, there will be a Democrat about to be inaugurated as governor and, hopefully also, a Dem as AG. Ingram County (Lansing, the state capitol) is always Dem, I believe, and even now it’s prosecutors probably could launch a criminal-fraud inquiry—and it should. But the statute of limitations probably will not have run by, say, mid-2019, so it will still be prosecutable then by a Dem AG’s office. And presumably, this will be a big campaign issue statewide in 2018.
Which brings me to this: In virtually every instance (the one exception is Romney during his first two years as governor after running as a moderate, before starting to run as far-right presidential primary candidate) of some rightwing successful businessperson winning a state governorship (and now, president), on the claim that he’s been such a success at business, and, well, shouldn’t the government be run like a business, that person has proved utterly incompetent. Snyder and Illinois governor Bruce Rauner are exhibits A and B; Florida governor Rick Scott is Exhibit C.
As for people who were falsely accused of fraud under what itself was a fraudulent system, they should file a class action lawsuit in state court against the folks who sold the state that snake oil.
You seem to be assuming the problem is with the computer system. If the computer system is simply implementing the law, then there is no fraud by the company that created it. Perhaps the problem is in the law itself, or with the people who do not return the forms when they are supposed to.
There is a very interesting book, written by the estimable Math Babe (www.mathbabe.org), Cathie O’Neill about this phenomenon called Weapons of Math Destruction. I can’t recommend it enough. Combining the supposed lack of bias of statistics, conservative’s ardent desire to treat the government as just another tool for personal monetary profit and the right’s natural desire to kick people when they are down and steal their lunch money means these stories will just proliferate.
The headline in last Sunday’s San Jose Mercury News was all about AI as the next wave of technological profit making. The future is not likely to be comforting. Instead of asking where our jetpacks are, we will be asking where all our stuff went.
Thanks Bill:
I have read Cathy before. I appreciate the recommendation.
Run – What happened with the rumors of Chrysler and the Chinese??
bk:
You did read my post about being topical to the post? Try doing so or your time will be short here otherwise be patient.