As a Native D.C. Resident, I implore the Mayor and District of Columbia Government to establish and distribute Reparations to D.C. residents for the violation of Civil and Fifth Amendment Rights caused by the negligence and lack of oversight from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser over the Director of the Department of Employment Services Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes. During the Covid-19 pandemic the Mayor had a duty to ensure D.C. residents could take care of themselves during a public health emergency. During a time where no one could work due to a district-wide shut down, the Mayor failed to ensure that all D.C. residents were aware of the benefits available to them. 

The residents of this District deserve a Mayor that will fight for everyone, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. D.C. residents were evicted and are still being evicted while recovering from the public health emergency and from damages caused by being denied assistance during the public health emergency. Because of the D.C. DOES and it’s Director Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes' failure to hire sufficient staffing and modernize UI IT case management information systems, D.C. residents have been forced to pay for the Mayor’s lack of oversight of the D.C. Department of Employment Services and its Director. 

Unemployment insurance compensation was created to help alleviate the need for public welfare benefits once a worker became unemployed. It has been a staple for working Americans after a loss of work for decades. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Director Unique Morris-Hughes should have an understanding of how essential Unemployment Insurance can be to help alleviate the need for individuals to apply for public welfare benefits after a loss of income.   

Under the CARES Act, new UI benefit programs were created to assist workers during the public emergency and public health emergency. Those programs, known as PEUC, PUA, included automatic FPUC payments. In order to receive unemployment insurance under the CARES Act UI, D.C. residents had to: 
-Be ineligible to receive regular UI because of lost income due to COVID 19 
-Be self-employed or seeking part-time work 
-Lack sufficient work history 
-Exhaust all rights to regular UI and extended benefits 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under these eligibility requirements, every D.C. resident old enough to work for the D.C. Marion Barry Summer Youth Program and the elderly who've exhausted their rights to regular unemployment insurance benefits, for whatever reason, during the COVID-19 public emergency and public health emergency were eligible for CARES Act Unemployment Insurance benefit programs. D.C. residents were rightfully entitled to those monetary benefits and the Mayor failed to ensure that every resident received benefit information and benefit payments. For some households with children old enough to work in the summer youth employment program and teenagers able to work part-time throughout the school year could have received, at least, $4,500-$30,000 in additional financial assistance through CARES Act Unemployment Insurance benefit programs. D.C. parents were forced to settle for stimulus payments that only ranged from $600-$1,400.
 
While the Mayor and the director of DOES applauds themselves over creating 1000s of new jobs over the last decade, they have failed to ensure that D.C. residents applying for unemployment insurance are receiving proper and timely benefit payments. The public health emergency of 2020 emphasized how important a modernized UT IT system can be for workers when they lose employment or income. While residents went through a pandemic without timely or proper payments, the Mayor and the District allowed employers to deny unemployment insurance under the CARES Act. On top of siding with employers during a public health emergency, the Mayor and the Director treated its residents as criminals by assuming all individuals filing for unemployment insurance were engaged in fraudulent activity because of a lack of supervisory staff to ensure proper and accurate determinations. Instead of hiring enough staff to handle the influx of UI claims and CARES UI benefit claims and modernizing UI case management information systems, the Mayor allowed the Director and the D.C. DOES to systematically deny claims for unemployment insurance. While those monetary benefits were put back into DOES funds, District residents went without benefits for weeks, months, and even years. 

 

While the subject of reparations is an ongoing discussion, I ask the Mayor and District of Columbia Government to lead by example and develop a system of distributing reparations to D.C. residents. This is the time to utilize the technological era to right the wrongs of today and yesterday so that we can prevent them from happening again tomorrow. When the District Government establishes a process and procedure to distribute reparations to D.C. residents for the violation of their Civil rights and Fifth amendment right to due process, quality of life, liberty, and property under the CARES Act of 2020, the District can then use those processes and procedures to assist with the distribution of reparations to descendants of slaves living within the District of Columbia. 

To understand the magnitude of the Mayors negligence and why the only solution is to ensure and distribute reparations to D.C. residents, you would have to read the U.S. and District OIG Audit reports of the DOES during the public health emergency and beyond. You would also have to follow the money given to the Department since 2018(honestly, since 2009) to ensure prompt and proper distribution of unemployment insurance benefits. I will try my best to simplify everything in a timeline below. 
 
2018 
-Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes as Interim Director of DOES in March 2018. 

-In spring 2018 Interim Director Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes said a new unemployment insurance benefit system could be finished by the end of next year [2019]. 

-In December 2018, Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes was officially approved as the Director of D.C. Employment services, that’s 13 weeks after the 180 days(6 months) that D.C. Law allows for Interim Directors. 
 
2019 
-February 2019, DOES said an update to the DOES website would go live in July 2019 that would make accessing benefits on phones easier and more user-friendly. 

-April 2019, the Director announced that the agency would miss the July deadline to update UI IT systems. 

-In 2019, the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute reported that the D.C. Department of Employment Services had routinely spent less than its available funding. In 2018, DOES spent $75 million on employment services out of $79 million. (This lack of oversight by the Mayor has allowed the DOES and it’s director to consistently not use funds to modernize UI IT case management systems after receiving incentive funds since 2009 to do so.) 
 
2020 
-At the beginning of the 2020 COVID 19 public health emergency, the D.C. Department of Employment Services received federal funding under the CARES Act to ensure proper staffing and modernized UI IT systems to prepare for the influx of UI and Pandemic assistance benefit claims due to COVID 19 related reasons. 

-In March of 2020, the Office of Inspector General(OIG) reported renewed concerns about the Department of Labor and workforce agencies’ ability to deploy UI program benefits promptly and efficiently while maintaining integrity and acceptable oversight. 

-The U.S. OIG audit advisory report in April 2020 outlined areas of concern that state and local workforce agencies should consider as they implement CARES Act UI programs, such as preparedness with staffing and UI system capabilities. 

2021 
-On February 8, 2021, the Mayor of the District of Columbia announced that an additional $11 million will go to the Department of Employment Services to help hire additional staff as well as fund an update on system modifications to adhere to the Continuing Assistance Act. Over a year after the OIG’S recommendations to hire sufficient staff and modernize UI IT system programs, the Director and the Department of Employment Services failed to adhere to the guidance of the ETA(Employment and Training Administration) and U.S. OIG to use Cares Act funds to ensure prompt implementation of new UI programs and prompt distribution of benefits. These failures led to a violation of District and Federal rights, and resulted in additional funds being used to keep DOES operating in accordance with the CARES Act and Continued Assistance Act. (While the D.C. Department of Employment services attempted to implement CARES Act UI programs in a timely and efficient manner, there is no way to confirm if all eligibility requirements, determinations of overpayments and recovery methods were done properly.) 

-On May 28, 2021 the U.S. OIG reported that workforce agencies struggled to implement CARES Act Unemployment Compensation Insurance. The U.S. OIG report concluded that agencies faced challenges ensuring programs were implemented and claimants were paid timely, did not perform required and recommended improper payment detection and recovery activities. The report also highlighted inaccurate and incomplete overpayment, fraudulent payment and claims data. State workforce agencies’, including the District of Columbia, lacked communications of data to U.S. OIG and ETA. This made it difficult for ETA to perform accurate reporting. This led to an inability to monitor if state and local workforce agencies were using improper payment detection and recovery tools to help identify and recover overpayments and fraudulent payments. The U.S. OIG also reported insufficient staffing levels to handle claims in accordance with the CARES Act. 

2022 
-On March 1, 2022, the Director of DOES announced that an additional $2.28 million grant from the Department of Labor will be used to improve the unemployment benefits program and enhance equity in access to benefits and service delivery for D.C. workers. 

2023 

The Final Audit report of the D.C. Department of Employment Services by the D.C. OIG reported in April 2023 that the Director disagreed with 12 of the 14 recommendations given in response to the Department’s handling of claims during the COVID 19 public health emergency. Along with the audit, the D.C. OIG reported that the Department of Employment Services: 
Improperly denied benefits to eligible individuals without conducting required wage investigations 

-Did not always process UI claims promptly 

-Did not always assign a claims examiner to investigate claims issues 

-Lacked supervisory staff to process claims within 21 days 

-Did not always conduct or document fact finding activities and made eligibility determinations without gathering necessary and relevant information to ensure quality, accurate, and timely determinations 

-Did not always issue accurate and timely determinations in UI claims 

-Did not always process appeals 

-Did not always reverse overpayments 

-Did not consistently use case management information systems to track and monitor UI claims processing status. 

-Did not track and analyze technical infrastructure issues 

Not only did the Mayor breach D.C. codes of conduct by willingly allowing an Interim Director to make official decisions on behalf of the DOES, she did not step in when the Director admitted to not being able to adhere to modernization timelines year after year. District residents and workers rely on the Mayor to protect their rights when they are unable to due to an infringement of civil and constitutional rights. 
 
After failing to protect the rights of D.C. residents during a Nation and Districtwide public emergency and public health emergency, I urgently ask that the Mayor and the District of Columbia Government establish a Reparations fund and designate or create a D.C. government department or agency to distribute the funds in a prompt and efficient matter. I ask that these funds be granted to all residents living in the District since the enactment of the CARES Act, to the official end of the District’s Public Emergency and Public health emergency. The funds should be available for all D.C. residents to apply for under the original eligibility requirements for CARES Act UI programs and paid in a lump sum payment, including all weeks available for CARES Act UI and FPUC benefit payments. This gesture would not only help strengthen D.C. residents’ faith in the integrity of the Mayor and the District Government but it will also give D.C. Department of Employment Services and its Director an opportunity to demonstrate how effective the modernized UI IT systems are after millions of dollars in incentive funds, since the appointment of Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes as Interim Director of the Department. 

After a plethora of Acts created to help the District ensure that its residents had some form of financial security during public health emergencies, the failure to adhere to them has affected my faith in the integrity of the Mayor, DC DOES and its Director, and employers operating within the District of Columbia. The delay in using Cares Act funds to acquire proper staffing and modernize UI IT system capabilities has resulted in multiple violations of the rights of District Residents. This request for compensation through reparations will allow D.C. residents, like myself, to exercise our right to quality of life, liberty and property.