VIRGINIA (WRIC) — The Virginia Employment Commission is now responding after a data error resulted in thousands of applicants being told they were overpaid.
The agency announced this week that 6,811 applicants received incorrect overpayment notices, but now they are no longer on the hook for returning money they never received.
The transition over to the VEC’s new IT system late last year caused the data error, which informed thousands of applicants that the agency overpaid them. Before the revelation, the agency said the money owed by those applicants totaled $814 million.
This month, the VEC will inform those applicants who received the incorrect overpayment notices.
The agency has come a long way since Governor Glenn Youngkin promised an overhaul of the agency on the campaign trail. VEC Commissioner, Carrie Roth, told 8News last week that they’re continuing to improve.
“I can’t underestimate the amount of work that we still have to do,” she said.
The agency has been dealing with a series of ongoing issues dating back to the start of the pandemic, when backlogs of claims and customer service complaints were mounting. Right now, over 67,000 Virginians are still waiting on first level appeals cases to be resolved.
More recently, 8News uncovered that the VEC leaked pages of private information to a Henrico County woman.
Roth previously said despite the setbacks, she’s satisfied with their efforts.
“We are pleased with the progress of the agency that we have done so far,” she said. “We have really gotten some clarity, some milestones to keep moving more forward.”
