TOPEKA
Kansas Labor Secretary Delia Garcia, who led the state’s rocky response to the massive surge of unemployment caused by the pandemic, has resigned after her agency overdrafted the bank accounts of an undetermined number of residents.
Gov. Laura Kelly’s office announced the resignation Monday. It closes out a tenure marked by a scramble to shore up antiquated computer systems and other infrastructure that left many newly unemployed Kansans spending hours or days on the phone seeking benefits.
Garcia’s departure came less than a week after the Department of Labor (KDOL) moved to “clawback” more than 4,500 duplicate benefit payments totaling $7 million, a decision that overdrafted the bank accounts of an untold number of recipients beginning last Thursday.
Kelly told reporters that KDOL moved forward on the clawbacks “without consent” from the governor’s office and “after my staff had directed them not to move forward with clawbacks.” She promised that people affected will be made whole.
“Mistakes were made, and I take responsibility for them,” Kelly said.
Kelly said she met with Garcia on Sunday night and that the secretary offered her resignation and Kelly accepted it. The governor has assigned her deputy chief of staff, Ryan Wright, to temporarily lead the agency. KDOL had been too slow to process unemployment claims with too many mistakes made, she said.
“There is no question that the Department of Labor was not able to adequately provide services for the many Kansans struggling in the wake of COVID,” Kelly said. “And for that, I take responsibility.”
Republican lawmakers have been critical of Garcia’s handling of the unemployment crisis, which began in March as pandemic-related shutdowns led businesses to lay off record numbers of workers. The Kansas unemployment rate stood at 10 percent in May, down from a high of 11.9 percent in April.
As unemployed workers rushed to claim benefits, KDOL’s computer systems, built on the foundation of a 1970s-era mainframe, were quickly overwhelmed. The normally quiet agency’s small staff was swamped with calls.
Garcia and Kelly reassigned dozens of employees from other agencies to take calls and brought back retired labor staffers. IT workers built new programs to deliver aid. But the improvements sometimes took weeks to implement — an interminable wait for people suddenly without income.
Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, said she was thankful Kelly had “finally recognized the Department of Labor is broken and thousands of Kansans who have been laid off through no fault of their own have been wronged by the system.”
“I continue to hear from many unemployed Kansans who aren’t receiving the checks that are due to them, or qualified recipients who have been unexpectedly cut off from payments without notice or reason,” Wagle said. “I am waiting expectantly to see what the next chapter of the Kansas Department of Labor looks like.”
The governor’s office said KDOL is working with banks to reimburse benefit recipients with overdrawn accounts. The agency also plans to create a hotline and email for affected residents.
The announcement by Kelly’s office didn’t explain why duplicate payments were issued or whether recipients were told the funds would be clawed back. A KDOL spokeswoman referred questions to the governor’s office.
Kelly’s office said the state plans to hire specialists to improve response times for Kansans applying for benefits and cut down on future backlogs and errors in delivering payments.
Kelly thanked Garcia for her service and said the secretary “inherited an agency that had its funding, its technology, and its staff gutted by the previous administration.”
Garcia, 43, the first Latina to serve in the Kansas Legislature, was also the youngest female lawmaker when she was elected in 2004. After six years in the chamber, she worked in leadership positions for national groups, including the National Migrant Head Start Association, the National Education Association and ReflectUS, a coalition that works to place more women in positions of political power.
During the pandemic, Garcia became the target of withering criticism from some GOP lawmakers. After a Senate hearing over unemployment benefit problems in May, Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, in an email accused two Republican senators who had questioned Garcia of engaging in “vitriolic, unwarranted and implicit racist attacks against a distinguished Latina leader” like her.
On the Senate floor, the two senators — Gene Suellentrop of Wichita and Rob Olson of Olathe — condemned Hensley. “I can’t believe that someone could put something like this in writing and slander other members,” Olson said.
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 10:43 AM.