Elliot Rodriguez.
By now we know that Florida's
unemployment system failed
miserably when it came to
helping thousands of Floridians
left without a paycheck
by the coronavirus.
Governor DeSantis responded
by pumping more resources
into the system and replacing
the director of the department
of economic opportunity.
But this week we learned that
Florida lawmakers got more
calls about the unemployment
mess than any other issue
in recent memory.
Every single member of the
legislature was contacted
by constituents who could
not maneuver the system.
Leading the effort to
help the newly unemployed
is Miami-Dade state
Senator Jason Pizzo,
who told me he had to dig deep
into his own pockets to help
unemployed Floridians.
Senator Pizzo,
how many complaints have you
gotten from constituents about
the Florida unemployment
compensation system?
And what's the most
common complaint?
Well, we've gotten
thousands of complaints
and we get them daily,
usually from the
same people as well.
But we try to call and
aggregate as many individual
and unique cases as we
can to pass off to DEO.
So I think we're north
of 20,000 right now
that we've individually
or uniquely touched,
either receiving
their information
and conveying it to DEO or
hundreds of those people
that we've received,
that we've also tried to help
them through some basic sort
of understanding of
the website as well.
So not every single one
that reached out to us
did we send off to DEO.
A lot of the people
we were able to help,
with just a couple of quick
fixes or issues that they had
with their account.
Do you believe the
system was intentionally
designed to fail?
So this is gonna come
out over the next several
months when we have,
I believe a panel or
committee in the Senate
and in the house in Florida,
I think is gonna be formed
to investigate this.
The governor has said, listen,
the system is a jalopy.
And he asked,
he tasked the inspector
general to investigate,
but I think we're gonna get
into more sort of a more,
gotcha moments, I think
on a Senate committee coming up.
And the reason why I say that
is because I'm privy to some
of the stuff that
happened behind the
scenes that we haven't
been very public about because
we've been trying to narrow
it down to what's
helpful to constituents.
What's gonna get them
the relief, the fastest,
and that sort of also ties
into I haven't been taking pot
shots or huge criticisms against
individuals in particular
that I think maybe have been
responsible or their staff may
have been responsible.
But when you ask me
the simple question,
was it designed to fail,
the technology behind it,
we got what we paid for.
And we paid for a system
that was not designed
to accommodate a state at the
time in 2012 of 20 million.
And certainly not today,
nearing 22 million.
What are the stories that
touched you the most?
Because this was
money that people
need to survive this pandemic.
Tomorrow will be a woman who
I'll refer to as Natalie.
She's a single mom.
She has cancer.
And she called and
got ahold of me.
You know, we answer the phone,
we answer emails and messages,
but a month and a half ago
and I'd seen, you know,
she had shown me snapshots.
Remember, I want to be clear.
We can't directly access
anyone's account, right?
So I don't have access to it.
That's under the governor
and the executive branch.
We begged and pleaded
to be able to do it.
We'd take training, do
whatever, sign releases,
but we weren't able to.
So the best that we do is I
receive someone's information
and then I push and nudge
and sometimes yell, beg,
and plead with DEO,
please get on this case.
And I had one
particular case where,
as I was talking about a month
and a half ago with a young
single mom who has cancer
and she's like, Senator,
I have a chemo
appointment tomorrow.
What do I do?
And she said that
out of frustration,
not asking for anything.
And so I said,
"This is what we're gonna do.
"I'm gonna pay for your chemo
appointment and the medicine
"that you have to
pick up afterwards."
And I'm gonna simultaneously,
I'm gonna be sending a text
message that she sent to me.
I sent it right to the
governor's chief of staff
and legislative
affairs director.
And I'm like, get on this, a
couple of days later, a mom,
Deborah walked into oncoming
traffic at nighttime and posted
the next morning,
early on Facebook
that unfortunately cars and
trucks veered away from her.
So we got Deborah, again,
I had to bring that over to
the governor's office and say,
look at this one, look at this.
This is where we are, this is
how desperate Floridians are.
And her case was taken care of.
Just last week with
the family in Lake
Mary that I told you about after
speaking to them and taking
their text message, I said,
"Is it okay if I share this?"
She said, "Yes,"
took her name out.
I put it up on
Twitter because I know
the governor's office
and state agency people
they follow me and they look
to see what we're posting,
what we're talking
about, I posted it.
I said, "We need to do better."
About an hour later,
realizing that they were
really desperate, needed help,
I called the extended
stay in Lake Mary,
gave him my credit card
and did the authorization
to take care of
their week there.
So at least they could
breathe and go to sleep.
I posted my credit card
authorization on Twitter
with that text message.
Sure enough, the new
spokesperson for the
governor's office
said, "Senator, please
contact our office.
"We'd like to help this family."
They got their
money in 24 hours.
We're more than six months,
six months into this pandemic,
has the system improved.
If people go on there right now,
how long does it take for
them to get the unemployment
compensation that they're
rightfully entitled to, right?
So the largest
majority of people
have actually gotten
some, have had
some success, so to speak
or have had some progress.
And what I mean by that is
people that were completely
locked out or they couldn't
access their account,
or couldn't get through the
first page or the system would
crash, you know, everybody's
gotten their info in.
I will say that, okay.
So everybody's been
able to, you know,
attendance has been taken
on the number of people now,
still staggering,
remember we're in a state
with almost 22 million
people, Ellie, right?
So, you know, when you
say 10% of a state,
you're talking about 2 million,
we're talking about 1%,
you're talking about 200,000.
So, you know, even just like if,
when the governor was
saying things like,
oh, 90% have been paid or
95% have been paid, well,
if you have a million and
a half people applying
or 1.2 million applying, and
you're only servicing 90%,
this isn't a baseball
batting average, right?
This is an, each individual
person is a Floridian, a father,
a mother, a sister, a brother,
somebody that's responsible
for bills and obligations.
You would be right to think,
or to suspect that after awhile
that people will just give
up, people will be able
to go back to work.
And you can say, look over
here, we're reopening.
Everything's great and
revenue starts coming in.
Remember these people
don't have 10 hours a day
to wait on hold anymore
'cause they're working.
Well, that makes
it more feasible
that people think
that this was designed
so that people would
give up and it would show
lower numbers of people on
unemployment in Florida.
So let me just, in all fairness,
I'm not happy with anyone's
performance as far as an agency,
a staff and
administration, okay.
But, and I'm a Democrat, but,
so I may get some ribbing
from this from my party.
This website is not Governor
DeSantis's his fault, okay.
He didn't build the
site he didn't contract,
he didn't ask for it, whatever,
but the execution or
finding a solution
or finding alternative, okay.
In the short term we gave
everybody gave it some pause.
He pushed Ken Lawson
from DEO aside,
brought in Secretary
Sater from another agency.
And actually the pace of
payments were really good.
Did about 177,000,
the first weekend.
And everything was going better.
If we kept that pace,
we would have been fine.
Again, I don't blame
DeSantis for the website,
but after a while, as time
passes, it's like, yes,
we all know what's wrong.
And it became ad nauseum.
He would say it was a jalopy.
It was designed to fail.
It's terrible, great.
But now you're the governor.
What are you gonna do about it?
Candidly, Rick Scott
has some weird contempt
for people that need help.
You know, he talks about
in campaigns on coming
from very humble
beginnings and even
in project housing,
but then to make statements
early on about how people
are living lavish
lifestyles on unemployment.
Well, Governor Scott was
even against the $600,
he thought $600 was
too much to pay people
because it would keep
people from working.
What do you say
to that argument?
I say that the irony,
the tragic irony for people
that he's saying that coming
from the state that pays one
of the lowest in the country.
What do I mean by
that, Montana, okay.
Not exactly a thriving
areas of the, you know,
metropolis like Miami or Tampa
or Jacksonville or Orlando.
Montana pays $508 a week.
So if you want to make the
argument for state unemployment.
So if you want to
make the argument,
listen in Washington state,
you can get up to $844 a week.
And New York is
over $500 a week.
But in a place like Montana
or Washington state,
where you can rent a place,
a two bedroom, two bath,
probably for six, $700 a
month and live pretty well in,
in Florida the average
rent is $1,181.
Well, I'm out of time,
but I want to ask you,
do you think there
will be a voter outrage
over the situation?
I really hope voters don't
have a short term memory
and it really, this
isn't partisan, Elliott,
an equal number of Republicans
and Democrats have discovered
an unfair surprise that
when they've never asked
for anything in their
life, they've worked hard,
they've done what
they're supposed to do,
their government has
failed them, okay.
And I really hope they don't
have short term memories
and whoever you love,
whoever you vote for,
whoever you're interested in,
get a commitment out of them
that this system and this thing
will not happen
again the way it did.
All right, State
Senator Jason Pizzo.
Thank you very much
for joining us.
Thank you, Ellie.
Last week, Florida
began paying $300
in federal
unemployment benefits.
In addition to state
unemployment money,
which is capped at $275 a week.
One of the lowest
amounts in the nation.
Up next, 25 years
after the abduction
and murder of Jimmy Rice,
I speak to Jimmy's father,
Don, about the organization,
he and his wife Claudine created
to help find missing children.
The legacy of Jimmy