LEWISTON — A panel created this past spring by Gov. Paul LePage made public its recommendations Tuesday, reporting that it found “no direct or intentional bias” against employees nor employers who participate in the unemployment claims and appeals process.
LePage said the report confirmed his concerns; critics called it a rebuke.
LePage tasked the Unemployment Reform Blue Ribbon Commission with reviewing “complaints and concerns raised by Maine citizens about the consistency and objectivity of the unemployment adjudication process,” according to a statement issued by the commission.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, LePage said the report “confirmed several of my concerns surrounding payments to people who are later found ineligible to receive benefits, problems associated with delayed receipt of benefits, lack of effective communication necessary to standardize decision-making and inconsistent application of evidence standards relating to business records. These are serious flaws in the system.”
LePage’s actions followed an April 11 Sun Journal investigation that cited sources who said LePage had called Department of Labor employees to a mandatory luncheon at the Blaine House in March and scolded them for finding too many unemployment-benefit appeals cases in favor of workers. They were told they were doing their jobs poorly, sources said. Afterward, they said they felt abused, harassed and bullied by the governor.
The Blue Ribbon Commission didn’t address those charges.
A lawyer from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor has conducted a federal investigation, having interviewed unemployment hearing officers who attended the Blaine House meeting.
David Webbert, president of the Maine Employment Lawyers Association called for that investigation. He said Tuesday that the commission’s report is a repudiation of the governor and his policies and beliefs.
Webbert said the commission found the department was under-staffed because LePage continued to have positions cut during his administration through budget reductions, even as unemployment had risen to record highs resulting from the 2008 recession.
Webbert also said the governor clearly misunderstood labor law when he espoused the belief that workers fired for cause are ineligible to collect benefits.
One of the commission’s major finds is that he and many employers “have misconstrued the standard of proof, which is that you get unemployment unless there’s willful misconduct; it’s not an issue of whether there was just cause for termination.”
Commission members interviewed state labor staff and reviewed cases and relevant state laws before reaching their conclusions, according to the commission’s report.
Commission members were former Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court Daniel Wathen and Hon. George M. Jabar II, commissioner for Kennebec County and a practicing lawyer in Waterville.
They presented their findings to the governor Monday.
Unanimous recommendations by the commission to improve the system include:
* More staffing;
* Greater communication among staff at the three levels of the unemployment and appeals process;
* Change practices of first-level appeals officers relating to business records introduced as evidence in some misconduct cases;
* Greater public understanding of the unemployment insurance program;
* More efficiency in the appeals process by improving the collection of evidence from employers and by passing along evidence from original claims to appeals hearing officers; and
* Upgrading technology.
Lawmakers also weighed in Tuesday. A statement from House Majority Leader Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, said, “This report confirms what we’ve known all along: The only bias or inappropriate behavior here was the governor’s intimidation of these neutral arbiters … Bullying is no way to govern.”
Tim Belcher, general counsel for the Maine State Employees Association, Local 1989 of the Service Employees International Union, said, “Members of the Maine State Employees Association, SEIU Local 1989, welcome the Blue Ribbon Commission’s conclusion that State of Maine workers have done their jobs fairly and diligently, without bias, despite Gov. LePage’s failure to adequately fund the Unemployment Insurance system.”
And, he noted, nothing in the report justifies the governor’s “attempt to pressure independent quasi-judicial hearing officers to conform to his political agenda.”
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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