Rockford Sun

State Rep. Joe Sosnowski (R-Rockford) has had enough of the state unemployment offices. 

The offices have been in a disastrous state all throughout the pandemic, with state lawmakers hearing countless horror stories from constituents on weeks-long delays in responses from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) during a time when unemployment help is urgently needed.

Sosnowski said that Illinoisans are experiencing "a lack of management, a lack of leadership and horrible customer service" through the unemployment office.

The legislature recently filed House Resolution 226, a bipartisan resolution with over 30 co-sponsors calling on the unemployment offices to reopen and kick into high gear. 

"The unemployment offices need to reopen," Sosnowski said in a May 20 press conference. "[...] All of the issues and problems that our residents, who are taxpayers, have had with these offices have continued to go on."

With other state offices such as the secretary of state having been open for in-person services since June of last year, Sosnowski said there is no reason that IDES should still be shuttered. 

According to the representative, there was at one point almost 200,000 outstanding calls awaiting reply from IDES, with most Illinoisans waiting weeks or months for a response. 

The IDES director reportedly defended the department, saying in a letter to Sosnoswki that the department's call centers are "at an all-time high" in productivity and that in-person operations would actually worsen IDES' production. 

Sosnowski said that the governor and the IDES leadership are in no rush to reopen and begin tending to the state's unemployed; the administration has loosely alluded to reopening perhaps sometime this summer, but the Rockford legislator believes those plans to be a lie. 

"It's absolutely outrageous," Sosnowski said. "We have residents [...] on temporary unemployment who can't get calls back. As legislators, we try to advocate on behalf of them and we can't get calls back."

State Rep. Tom Weber (R-Antioch) also called out IDES earlier this month and demanded action from Pritzker, as did state Rep. Tom Bennett (R-Lake Villa), who questioned why the unemployment offices remain closed as the number of new COVID cases are declining.