Rockford Sun

State Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Rockford) says he could see the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) crisis coming.

"When the governor and state health people chose to shut down thousands of businesses, putting tens of thousands of people into unemployment, we knew there was going to be a problem,” Syverson said in a video posted to Facebook. “At the same time, the governor chose to close all of the unemployment offices and we warned back then that this was going to be a disaster for laid-off workers trying to get help and trying to get benefits. The results of this audit do not surprise me."

Syverson’s words follow the release of a new Illinois Auditor General report that details longtime shortcomings within the system. He recently joined fellow Republican state Sens. Jason Plummer (R-Vandalia), Sue Rezin (R-Morris) and Win Stoller (R-Peoria) in demanding that the last 13 months of IDES activity be thoroughly examined, warning beforehand that deficiencies he’s often spoke out against could carry a soaring price tag for already cash-strapped taxpayers.

The Auditor General claims Pritzker and his administration failed to validate the identities of roughly 5,000 claimants before paying out somewhere in the neighborhood of $42,000,000 to them and paying out benefits to dozens of deceased individuals.

“My office firsthand has been dealing with this for over a year, trying to help families get their cases resolved,” Syverson said. “This has been clearly the number one issue my office deals with. They’ve been frustrated by two major areas. The first are those trying to enroll and can’t get through to anybody and the second are those that go to enroll and find that someone has already enrolled under their name and they’re trying to get that resolved.”

Earlier this year, state Sen. Terri Bryant introduced a bill calling on the Auditor General to conduct a full audit of IDES. Senate Bill 113 would also pave the way full examination of the state unemployment benefits system. As far back as April 2020, the federal government advised that the state institute more fraud-prevention tools, a recommendation Republicans contend the Pritzker administration never acted on.