LANSING — Legislation introduced today would take steps to make amends to the more than 44,000 people the state of Michigan wrongly accused of unemployment fraud, resulting in millions of dollars in fees, penalties and other financial damages to innocent Michigan families. In response, state Rep. John Chirkun (D-Roseville) issued the following statement:
“I am glad to see a bipartisan package of bills addressing the problems in the Unemployment Insurance Agency to deal with the consequences of a faulty computer fraud detection system. This is a good start, but we need to go much further and make these victims and their families whole. Some of those falsely accused of fraud lost nearly everything, and we owe it to them to pass the Democratic package of bills addressing the other issues affecting them. I also look forward to finding support for my bill that would require any state department that suffers a data breach, as happened at UIA, to assist those affected by the revelation of sensitive information.”