SARASOTA – In the midst of a global health pandemic many Florida residents are dealing with business closures, lost jobs, and unemployment benefits nightmares.
“I have been getting call after call after call for weeks and weeks and weeks about Florida’s disastrous unemployment system,” said Good.
Florida State Representative Margaret Good says she’s holding weekly online town hall meetings to probe issues plaguing her constituents. Good says the majority those calls deal with applying for unemployment benefits.
“We just found out today that 825,000 people applied for unemployment last week and only 35,000 applications were actually processed, that is shameful,” said Good.
It’s not just problems with unemployment benefits, Good says many small business owners who applied early for the Payment Protection Program, the federal loan offered to rescue small businesses, haven’t seen the money.
Andrew Wolfe is one of many business owners on the Suncoast who are barely making ends meet.
“l have a claim number that I can call and check on. I’ve tried to call and get halfway through, and when I log into my business account to check my status it says COVID-19 reapply like saying all the money was spent you need to reapply,” said Wolfe.
Wolfe owns Wolfe Design’s custom Glass and Mirror. He says he’s getting calls about some jobs but that’s not enough to pay company expenses. He says he’s turned to asking his community for help since his PPP status remains unclear.
“It’s concerning to me that we allocated $50 million in small business loans while giving away $543 million in corporate tax refunds to the top 1% of corporations,” said Good. “At these times this is when we support small businesses, this is when we support the actual people that are doing the work in our state that needs our help.”
The governor reported Thursday that Florida has sent unemployment payments to 33,623 people meaning only 4 percent of Floridians who’ve filed have gotten their payments.
