Behold, tidings of great joy. Just in time for the holidays, the Scott administration is forcing jobless Vermonters to jump through hoops and navigate needless obstacles because the Labor Department can’t seem to keep the unemployment system working. The above messages are what you see when you visit the Department’s Unemployment Insurance webpage.

I mean, seriously. Each claimant is required to file every week. But the UI Claimant Portal is on the fritz, and the call center is so overwhelmed that people are being urged NOT to call. If I were of a conspiratorial bent, I’d suggest that this is a nice way to try to keep costs down — by making it very difficult for claimants to comply with the terms of the UI program.

But really, given the Labor Department’s recent track record, the explanation is more likely a combination of incompetence and underfunding.

This situation is reminiscent of the early days of the Covid epidemic, when the UI system was swamped with a flood tide of claimants suddenly out of work. That was understandable, given the quantity of work and the antiquity of the system’s digital infrastructure. What wasn’t understandable was why it took several weeks for the administration to add contracted personnel to the beleaguered department.

Now, I’m not sure what the excuse is. It’s not a sudden surge in claims; Vermont’s unemployment rate remains extremely low and labor participation remains high.

This is yet another black mark on the ledger of Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington, a serial offender against good government. Harrington was the acting commish in the spring of 2020 when the UI system crashed under the weight of the epidemic. Seemed understandable at the time. As for the delay in hiring contractors, I lay that at the feet of Harrington’s superiors. I doubt he had the authority to hire a bunch of temporary staff on his own.

Shortly thereafter, his department gifted thousands of Vermonters with a data breach. In May 2020, Labor accidentally mailed UI claimants’ Social Security numbers to Vermont employers who weren’t connected to their cases. 

The following month, Harrington was given the job on a permanent basis. Given the circumstances, he didn’t deserve to be fired — but maybe he could have stayed on as acting chief until things settled down a bit.

Which they didn’t, not for long anyway. In February 2021, the department had to reissue about 180,000 tax forms mailed to unemployment insurance recipients because some of the forms contained the wrong person’s private information. The department had to reprint and mail all those forms, plus it sent postage-paid envelopes so recipients could return incorrect tax forms. Costly little mistake, that.

If the administration had a “three strikes, you’re out” policy for managerial failure, Harrington might have been in trouble. But no. And three months later, VTDigger reported that many unemployed Vermonters were having all kinds of trouble getting the benefits they needed and deserved.

Then came a major breach of trust with the Legislature, accidental or deliberate, you make the call. In the spring of 2021, lawmakers made a deal with Gov. Scott: He approved a temporary $25 hike in jobless benefits, to be paid out of federal Covid relief funds, in exchange for some nice tax cuts for businesses.

A few months later, Harrington sadly informed lawmakers that the UI boost wouldn’t be paid because the feds refused to allow it. Okay, them’s the breaks, I guess. Except it turned out that Harrington knew the feds had an issue with the idea two and a half months earlier, when the Legislature would have had time to amend or kill the combo package. He said he held off until he got definitive word, but still, would have been nice to raise a red flag when lawmakers could have changed course. As it was, the jobless didn’t get the money but businesses sure as hell got their tax break.

When asked if Harrington ought to offer his resignation (as one lawmaker suggested), Scott deflected. Stood by his man.

The Labor Department seems to have had a couple of trouble-free years after that. As far as we know. But now the system is on the fritz again, with no apparent excuses. We can hope the department will get things up and running in a hurry, but based on past performance, we can’t feel any confidence about it.