Jeer

Pennsylvania Labor and Industry Secretary Kathy Manderino wasn’t joking when she told the Senate Appropriations Committee this week that the state’s unemployment compensation system is broken.

In her remarks Manderino revealed that people who used the system in January often waited more than two hours for service when they called one of the centers. Unlike many of our state government’s other failings, the cause of the problem isn’t complex or unknown. It can be traced back to a dispute over $57.5 million that Gov. Tom Wolf requested in December. That request was effectively denied when the Republican-dominated Senate refused to vote on a House bill to provide the money.

The result has been layoffs of 499 state workers and the closing of three call centers. Before the cost-cutting, wait times for callers were under 10 minutes — but the system was still far from perfect. The Wolf Administration has claimed errors that predate them have resulted in the state missing out on $21 million in federal funding for the system.

The state needs to clean up this mess as soon as possible. This is no way to run a system of unemployment compensation.

Cheer

On Thursday Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale announced that his office was launching a special, statewide examination into the state’s child welfare service system.

DePasquale didn’t hold back in painting a dire picture of the Children and Youth Services infrastructure, saying his audits of various county-level departments have revealed high turnover and inexperienced staff members, growing caseloads and a steady flow of instances in which children fell through holes in the state’s safety net.

DePasquale pointed out that a better system will likely mean lower overall costs when it comes to prisons, drug and alcohol treatment, and counseling. But this is a case where dollars and cents on the state’s balance sheet don’t matter as much as the children being failed or case workers — many of whom are recent college graduates — being chewed up and spit out by the system.

“I’m worried about it (the system) from beginning to end,” DePasquale said.

The special report, which DePasquale said will look at 13 sample counties, is sorely needed. We hope it reveals a better way of doing business for the state’s CYS providers.

Jeer

It’s becoming abundantly clear that Republicans, who lambasted Hillary Clinton for her use of a private e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State, don’t really have a problem with using private e-mail to conduct public business.

On Thursday the office of Vice President Mike Pence confirmed that he had used a private AOL account since the 1990s, including during his time as governor of Indiana, until it was compromised by hackers in 2016. Pence’s contact list was the subject of a subsequent phishing attack. But not to worry. He started using a different private account, his office said.

Then there’s Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt. Pruitt is the former state attorney general for Oklahoma, and said during confirmation hearings that he never used a private e-mail account for official business. The problem is, he did. E-mails released as part of a lawsuit over access to AG records under Pruitt reveal that he had official e-mails in his private Apple e-mail account.

The hypocrisy here is stunning. Pence was a vociferous critic of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during the campaign. And Pruitt was apparently so uncomfortable with the optics of his own use of a private account that he misled Congress about it while under oath.

We’re certain they’ll come up with some fabulous explanation for why they should be allowed to play by a different set of rules.