Grundy Reporter

Sen. Sue Rezin has issued a statement that calls for accountability for unemployment fraud. She tweeted this week, "This continued lack of accountability from the administration on unemployment financials is completely unacceptable."

Rezin is the latest in a line of state Republicans who have called for increased transparency and insight, which they say is being hindered by a lack of cooperation by government agencies as well as late filings. The Illinois Department of Employment Security is almost a month late in its filing of a report about Illinois' unemployment trust fund. Republicans say that they were notified of the delinquency by the Illinois Comptroller. 

Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie (R-Lake Zurich) joined in the call for accountability, saying, “If regular Illinois businesses and families miss financial reporting they are fined and can even face criminal penalties. The governor is not above the law. The UI Trust Fund is deeply in debt and without this report, we have absolutely no idea how big the problem really is.”

This has been the message of the Republican Party of late as it faces a number of roadblocks to getting an accurate report from IDES. 

He added, “The people of Illinois deserve answers as to why his agency is refusing to provide basic financial numbers on where Illinois taxpayer and federal dollars are going. What is the governor hiding?”

An audit was performed on IDES that showed what some Republicans see as evidence of the failure of the program and its fiscal irresponsibility. The report showed that IDES paid almost $97 million in funds for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance over the minimum that was set and IDES did not do its due diligence to validate the wages of the recipients. The report also showed that IDES paid a total of $41.6 million in funds to several thousand recipients whose identities did not go through the identification process. 

According to Republicans, the fraud “cannot be calculated because IDES has not made any figures available or submitted this annual report.”

Rezin echoed this sentiment, saying, “It is tremendously unfair to penalize Illinois businesses for fraud perpetrated by criminals and ineptness from the administration in dealing with the fraud.”