FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gov. Andy Beshear is extending a contract with professional services company Ernst and Young to help deal with Kentucky’s backlog of unresolved unemployment claims.
What You Need To Know
- Contract with Ernst & Young extended
- The company is helping to resolve backlog of unemployment cases
- Contract extension costing $4.4 million to be paid by CARES Act
- Criticism Kentucky is paying firm too much versus what other states have paid
“Our goal is for this to be the last contract we have to have with them,” Beshear said.
The contract started July 1 and was set to expire Sunday, but Beshear said the deal will be extended another five weeks. The original cost of the contract was around $7.6 million, while the extension is worth another $4.4 million, all paid for with money from the federal CARES Act.
Beshear says, with many of the leftover claims, the only thing left is a letter that needs to be sent to the federal government.
“If there are 30,000 of those, we’ve done 95 percent of the work on 30,000, we just gotta get that last five percent done to get it through,” Beshear said.
Beshear hired the company to deal with a historic backlog of unresolved unemployment claims after the coronavirus pandemic started. He said the firm met its goal and helped resolve 56,000 claims.
“Remember, this is a system that’s set up to get people to quit,” Beshear said. “This is before all of this and it’s wrong to set up a system that way.”
Republicans have criticized the governor for the contract, especially since Kentucky is paying Ernst and Young nearly five times more than Colorado for similar help with unemployment claims.
Beshear says the work here required more people, and the claims the things they were dealing with were more difficult.
“I feel like we negotiated a fair deal based on the differences we have with Colorado and I think we were offered one, too,” Beshear said.