‘Somebody has got to fix this.’ For third day, hundreds line up for unemployment help
For the third day, hundreds of people came from across Kentucky to Frankfort and waited in line for hours for the chance to talk to someone from the state’s unemployment office.
The first people who were seen Thursday spent the night at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services building.
Learning a lesson from the past two days, where Kentucky State Police officers have had to cut off the line — sending people who are desperate for help and skeptical that they’ll receive a call back to fill out their name on a clipboard — the state doubled the number of employees working the line to 30 and moved it to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services building in Frankfort which has a parking lot that can hold more people.
The state also split the group into two lines — people who filed claims in March in one and everyone else in the other. The March line stretched beyond the building and wound through the parking lot. It took more than two minutes to walk to the back of the line. The other line was longer.
Latia Greenwell, 28, from Louisville, filed her claim March 29 and received one payment but then nothing. She had been waiting in line since 7:30 a.m. with her eight and four year old daughters and had still not made it to the front of the line because at noon, the state was seeing people who had been waiting since 6:30 a.m. in the March line and since 6:00 a.m. in the other line.
“What are we going to do as a state?” Greenwell asked as the line slowly moved in front of her. “Somebody has got to fix this.”
On Wednesday, people who had waited 10 hours were turned away at 6:50 p.m. because they were told the state’s system shut down at 7. Deborah McLaughlin, who was one of them, drove back to Frankfort from Berea Thursday and was able to go to the front of the line. She said they resolved her claim within five minutes of her sitting down.
In order to prevent a similar situation, the state handed out tickets to people, saying it meant they would be helped Wednesday. People who didn’t receive a ticket were told they could wait around, but that there wasn’t a guarantee they would be seen. If they were still there at 6 p.m. and weren’t able to be seen, the state said they could show the ticket on Friday and go to the front of the line.
Victoria Boggs, 65, drove from Jackson County and got to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services building at 5:30 a.m. She made it to the front of the line at 11:20 a.m. She filed for unemployment April 8 after she lost her job on March 26. She was one of the people who didn’t arrive in time Wednesday and was directed to a line with a clipboard. She had not received a call back as of Thursday morning.
Brian Smith, 26, of Lexington filed his claim on March 27 and hasn’t gotten any money yet. He arrived around 9 a.m. and didn’t realize their was a special line for people who filed in March so he was in the regular line. He said he didn’t think it was worth switching lines around 11:45 a.m.
Shortly after noon, he had only moved a few feet. He hadn’t brought any food, but Debra Raines, 64, of Lexington was in line next to him with her friend Tonya Grotman, 46. Raines offered Smith a bologna sandwich.
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 2:45 PM.
