Chicago City Wire

House Rep. Bradley Stephens (R-Rosemont) wants Illinoisans to receive their unemployment insurance benefits and for the state to fix the Illinois Department of Employment Security's (IDES) system which caused a massive data breach.

Stephens said that Illinois employees willingly agreed to cease working knowing they’d be safe at home when Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued shutdown orders in March.

"Their health and safety were at stake," Stephens said. "It’s been about 10 weeks and the governor has not kept up his end of the bargain."

Stephens said the state continues to delay benefits.

"Several thousands of families are without income," Stephens said. 

Stephens said service is getting worse, not better.

“These employees complied with the stay at home order, and they kept up their end of the bargain by staying at home," Stephens said.

Stephens said it was unfathomable that those seeking unemployment are still receiving responses that are delayed by weeks, calls are being dropped, and the website is still unable to handle the claims.

"It appears the $22 million spent by the governor to update and improve IDES systems was a monumental waste of taxpayer money," Stephens said.

Stephens said with the pandemic unemployment assistance became available online, Pritzker assured reporters that IDES would be ready to go live and claims would process faster, but that hasn't been the case.

Stephens said there have been a horrific amount of issues leading up to identities potentially being stolen.

"This is an incompetency matter," Stephens said. "The governor has repeatedly refused to accept our requests for help."

Stephens said Pritzker is going through it alone.

"We in the House Republican Caucus are ready and willing to help," Stephens said. "We want to force an audit of IDES."

Stephens joined other House Republicans in filing a resolution to call for a full audit of the IDES system.