Michigan Unemployment Insurance Scandal

[Lowell]

This story sickens me having, in my younger years, been laid off, stood in long lines for unemployment checks, while facing uncertainties. Imagine that stress, then wrongfully having those measly payments seized and exorbitant fines slapped on.

One of the largest, quietest and most life-stressing scandals of the previous state administration may finally see some justice. As many as 40,000+ victims were wrongly accused of Unemployment Insurance fraud.

The state has acknowledged that at least 20,000 Michigan residents - and possibly as many as 40,000 - were wrongly accused of fraud by a $47-million state computer system that the state operated without human supervision and with an error rate as high as 93%.

Those wrongly accused of fraud through robo-adjudications by the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System [[MiDAS) were subjected to highest-in-the-nation quadruple penalties and many were subjected to aggressive collection techniques such as wage garnishment and seizure of income tax refunds.
Freep Article

When the error was discovered, and some victims attempted a suit to recover their assets and reputations, a lower court quashed their suit saying they filed too late.

Yesterday the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that two of the plaintiffs cases could proceed. A start.

IMO there should be Legislative investigation and every single working stiff who got stiffed should have any wrongfully seized assets returned in double.

[O3H]

Good ol' uncle Marvin.

[Jimaz]

Michigan Integrated Data Automated System Experiences 93 Percent Error Rate During Nearly Two Years of Operation

This went on for nearly two years before anyone intervened?!

Things like this are what make people wary of driverless cars.

Not to mention things like the Boeing 737 MAX 8 debacle.

[Richard]

That’s as bad as the Flint water thing,somebody has to be accountable in these things,but nobody seems to want to be in the buck stops here line.

Notice how the blame is placed on the computer,it’s a machine and actual human beings knew what was happening and did nothing,it shows how evil people really are.

I agree on the made whole x2 but it would never replace what those people went through at that time.

It would stand to reason that many cases were highly documented,somebody needs to be held accountable,because they were.

This is where we are at now,machines determine our fate without human intervention,but with no skynet to take out.

[Wesley Mouch]

That’s as bad as the Flint water thing,somebody has to be accountable in these things,but nobody seems to want to be in the buck stops here line.

Notice how the blame is placed on the computer,it’s a machine and actual human beings knew what was happening and did nothing,it shows how evil people really are.

I agree on the made whole x2 but it would never replace what those people went through at that time.

It would stand to reason that many cases were highly documented,somebody needs to be held accountable,because they were.

This is where we are at now,machines determine our fate without human intervention,but with no skynet to take out.

Much worse than Flint. In retrospect, the Flint problem was obvious -- but at the time is to likely hard to see. Water quality is hard to measure.

But unemployment insurance? Seems easy by comparison. A review of any case should have been all the sunlight needed. That it didn't happen is an indictment of either individuals, or the system.

So tell me. Why do we assume that monopoly public schools are necessarily any better. We get crap results -- but instead of encouraging more entrants [[charters), we somehow think more money is the solution. Was the solution to put more money into the unemployment review system?

[Lowell]

There's a bit of irony in the former governor touting himself as a computer nerd, then this happening this happen under his watch.

I would hope some study would be done of the consequences of this disaster. I know from my working stiff days of the bankruptcies, families being broken and descent into alcoholism and drugs addiction springing from unemployment and income loss of transitioning to new lower paying work.

That was in the 1979-1982 recession that hit Detroit particularly hard. Lower middle working-class wages and buying power have remained largely flat since then with the same results.

[Sandhouse]

This episode pisses me off mightily, although it doesn't specifically affect Detroit. It doesn't look like the victims are going to be made whole for the costs they suffered.

This scandal taught me a new, scary word: auto-adjudication. The victims were accused, tried, and convicted by computer algorithm. Only much later did a few of them succeed in forcing their cases into a proper court, and the state tried hard to deny them their rights. This is what scares me about machine-generated traffic tickets, automated enforcement of car insurance, and automated road tolls. I hope we can keep all those things illegal on Michigan roads.