RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Employment Commission notified nearly 17,000 claimants that their pending appeals were filed late. If they didn’t explain why, by the close of business Friday, their appeals will be dismissed.
In all, nearly 26,000 appeals are impacted out of the VEC’s nearly 93,000 appeals on the backlog.
You may recall that since the pandemic began, the VEC has ranked nearly last among the states in getting payments to needy Virginians. Its performance in the timely hearing of their appeals of denials has also been abysmal.
The Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC), which brought a class action suit against the VEC in 2021 for its months-long delays in delivering benefits, says the dismissal of the appeals is just a sneaky way to unload more than a quarter of those 93,000 pending appeals.
Many have languished for years.
In fact, they say at a recent meeting of legal aid attorneys with the VEC, they were never told of Friday’s deadline.
“On average it’s taking, from the appeal filing to the hearing, a year,” said Flannery O’Rourke with the VPLC. “We are 48th worst in the country in terms of that wait. And so we discussed it with the commission but they didn’t happen to mention this plan to pursue late-filing dismissals."
CBS 6 reached out to the VEC to find out why the Commission did not share that pending deadline and are still waiting to hear back.
