DES clerk sat on hundreds of unemployment appeals
A lone clerk in the state’s social services agency hid hundreds of unemployment denial appeals requests over more than three years to avoid work rather than filing them with the Arizona Court of Appeals, a state official has told the court.
The missing cases finally came to light late last year when people started calling the Department of Economic Security inquiring about their appeals, the department’s appellate services administrator, Marilyn White, testified at a recent hearing. A slew of old cases filed with the court led to an unusual February order that the department immediately file the appeals or face contempt of court proceedings.
White told a three-judge panel that what she originally thought was only a few dozen cases stashed in the appeals board clerk’s office continued to grow and now sits at about 300. After the clerk resigned on March 6, appeals filings were found “just all over her office.”
“We found some in an in-basket in her office. We found some in a lateral file in her office. We found some in a banker box for a case that the court had long since sent back an order on,” White said on April 19. “They were tucked inside another case file. We found some in a file drawer in her desk.”
Read more: http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2017/05/19/des-clerk-sat-on-hundreds-of-unemployment-appeals/
