Arizona Unemployment Insurance Administration – Treating You Like A Criminal

Meanwhile, I wrote a follow up blog post on unemployment insurance in Arizona.

For A Few Dollars

For laughable $240 per week or even less you are being treated in a demeaning way and like a criminal. From this little money I would also need to pay for my health insurance (but ObamCare is not the solution). It's almost as if you have to beg for this money.

Still Operating In the 19^th Century

After you register online as an unemployed for the first time, the AZUIA (Arizona Unemployment Insurance Administration) sends you within a few days three separate letters in the snail mail with forms, booklets and tables.

Of those tons of questions you are being asked or the items you need to certify, too many of them kind of imply that you are only out there to cheat and defraud the AZUIA. This is what I call demeaning.

If you indicate during your online registration that you expect to receive some severance pay, AZBIA will send you a questionnaire with at least 10 questions that you have to answer within 5 working days of the date of notice.

Most of these questions, I thought I had already answered during my online registration. Why can I not answer those questions online? In the 21^st century there is no excuse not to offer an online form for those questions. It would also save some costs and tax payers' money!

Certification Of Understanding

This is a very benign name for a document that needs your signature and date certifying that “I am aware that the law provides criminal penalties for false statements made in connection with receiving unemployment insurance benefits.”

This is the caption of one of the forms that were mailed to me soon after I registered online as unemployed. This form has to be returned within 7 calendar days or “failure to return this certificate could result in denial of Unemployment Benefits.”

This form consists of a mumble jumble of a number of disparate things (Emphasis added):

·         I have to certify that I “read and understand the contents” of a 30 page “pamphlet” titled “A Guide To Unemployment Insurance” (small page size, 8.5 by 3.5 inches)
[Oh sure, no problem! Great bedtime reading. Will take me only a few hours, if taken seriously.]

·         I have to certify that I had been “given the opportunity to ask questions about my claim and have received an explanation of anything I did not understand.”
[Can I really certify this? I doubt it.]

·         I have to certify again what income tax deduction option that I had already selected during my previous online registration.
[Is this necessary? I am not a dummy.]

·         “I authorize my banking institution to release to the Arizona Department of Economic Security any account information pertaining to my receipt and eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits.”
[What do I authorize herewith? What exactly is the scope of account information to be released? They don’t even ask which bank institution? Do they already know my bank institutions? I would say this is so serious that this requires a separate form plus some explanations.]

You would think that perhaps this 30 pages pamphlet “A Guide To Unemployment Insurance” would tell you something about this Certification of Understanding form or in particular about the authorization to release any banking account information, but the pamphlet on page 26 is very generic and the respective paragraph is only 5 lines long.

Arizona Department Of Economic Security

Whoever came up with this oxymoron of a department name? There is no economic security and never was in a free market economy. Only central planners, statists and the like can think of something like this.

The Arizona Statutes under Title 23 (“Labor”) contains chapter 4 titled “Employment Security”. Is this what this department is named after?

On their website, this department does not provide you with any e-mail addresses, the aforementioned letters I received after I registered as an unemployed also did not include any e-mail addresses, only phone numbers and P.O. Boxes. This is not acceptable anymore in the 21^st century!

Or is this just a secretive department totally afraid of potential legal liabilities or possible retributions by dissatisfied unemployed people? Or do public sector union work rules prevent e-mail contact between tax payers and public sector employees?

This department is also hiding telephone numbers to their various divisions, office of the director etc. You really have to search or drill on their website for their phone numbers. Just try their Site Map, it’s awful.

Finally, I found this page (just look at the rather generic link address itself) with phone numbers of the director’s office. Well, I called (602) 542-4791, the number given on their website for the “DES Director” to inquire about the e-mail address of the Director. Well, it is the Operator, who picks up the phone not the Director’s office. I called twice and both times the Operator picked up, a nice, elder lady. Must be a very busy director’s office or they do not like to receive calls from unemployed tax payers like me.