By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Complaints continue about fraud and security breaches at the state’s unemployment agency. Illinois House Republicans again are trying to put the governor and the Illinois Department of Employment Security on the defensive.

“Despite what we know about the fraud, IDES has taken little to no action to prevent it and now has gone so far as to go after Illinoisans who are victims of fraud to reclaim money the administration wrongly paid out in the first place,” said State Rep. Mike Murphy (R=Springfield). The system does not even have anything in place to flag out-of-state claims as suspicious.

“This is simply unacceptable.”

The Pritzker administration points out the Republicans holding the news conference did not support the state budget, but Murphy says IDES mostly runs on federal dollars, anyway.

“We have questions, but we’re not getting answers on why there are so many failures going on,” said State Rep. Tom Bennett (R-Gibson City). “We need to be able to figure out why the administration and IDES can’t handle the job requirements. we have got to be able to respond. We have got to be able to be more flexible with what’s going on with this.”

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].