Plenty of work to do in December

A legislator’s duties in Sacra­mento include introducing and voting on legislation and state budgets that impact the lives of millions. Though this gets the most attention, another ma­jor responsibility involves as­sisting constituents who need help dealing with the state’s massive, and at times, very in­efficient bureaucracy. That re­sponsibility falls to the District Office (DO).

I’m very proud that over the past 12 years my DO handled over 20,000 cases that have been submitted to us by constit­uents. These involve problems with multiple state agencies in­cluding the Department of Mo­tor Vehicles (DMV), unemploy­ment and disability claims at the Employment Development Department (EDD), firearms and background checks with the Department of Justice (DOJ), help with Medi-Cal and health insurance and issues/problems with hundreds of other state agencies and departments.

Problems with EDD during the pandemic stand out. Begin­ning in March of 2020, EDD collapsed under the weight of thousands of people being laid off, virtually simultane­ously. Getting through to EDD by phone was impossible. Out of necessity, EDD claimants turned to District Offices all over California, which became virtual EDD extensions. Dur­ing this period, my DO handled over 3,000 EDD cases – on top of all the other cases that come before us. We frequently pro­cessed over 30 EDD cases each day, up from only seven during all of 2019. Due to the unprec­edented number of new cases, along with claimant identity issues, computer glitches and fraudsters gaming the system, it could take EDD weeks and even months to process — and pay — many of their stressed and desperate claimants. At times each of my DO staff had over 50 open EDD cases – we had to hire additional, tempo­rary staff to handle the deluge.

But that’s why we’re here. My staff and I have always taken our responsibility to help con­stituents very seriously. Going forward, rest assured that this will not change when the new legislative session begins De­cember 2nd.

Assemblymember Marie Waldron, R- Valley Center, represents the 75th Assembly District in the Cali­fornia Legislature, which includes most of rural eastern and northern San Diego County.