Public Investigator By Ellen Gabler of the Journal Sentinel

"Those checks were my lifeline to pay my bills," said Jeff Sohns, a laid-off wholesale mortgage broker from Wauwatosa, whose unemployment insurance checks were held up for four weeks in August while he waited for the agency to sort out questions about his job search.

The worst part, Sohns said, was he tried to call the inquiry line at least a dozen times but still had no idea why his checks weren't coming or how to fix the situation.

"This whole month, it's been a nightmare," said Sohns, who finally received his weekly checks last week after he got through to a claims specialist and discovered information was missing from his file.

Officials with the Department of Workforce Development said the phone system drops calls so people don't sit in a queue for too long.

State employees and unemployed workers say frustration levels have been boiling over because of the situation.

Public Investigator reviewed eight months of call center data after hearing that laid-off workers were unable to find out what was happening with their checks.

The review shows that on average, about 62,000 calls made to the unemployment inquiry line were dropped during each week of August - more than 86% of all calls that came in. That includes people redialing multiple times after they were disconnected.


Gee, grandma, I can’t wait until the government controls the entire health care industry! The completely unionized staff will be soooo responsive!

Not to worry, though. Nothing can possibly go wrong with the plans of President Training Wheels to re-engineer a $3 trillion industry: after all, he’s historic!