TOPEKA, Kansas — The head of the agency that’s overseeing Kansas’ response to historic unemployment rates during the coronavirus pandemic resigned Monday.
Governor Laura Kelly said in a statement that Kansas Department of Labor Secretary Delía García “inherited an agency that had its funding, its technology and its staff gutted by the previous administration."
She did not say whether García’s resignation was requested, and at a news conference later Monday, she said: “I met with Secretary Garcia Sunday night, and she offered her resignation and I accepted it.”
Kelly's release noted that more than 4,500 people received duplicate payments this month, worth $7 million total. While her release said the Department of Labor did not consult her office before trying to reverse the mistake on June 18, the governor said at the news conference that the agency was told not to reverse the mistake. It did anyway, and some people's bank accounts were overdrawn.
"We have a responsibility to the people we represent to get it right," Kelly said. "And when we don't, we'll make the changes needed to fix the problems."
Kelly framed the move as part of “immediate action” to change the unemployment system, adding that she’ll bring in people to help “improve response times,” “implement new processes to manage the caseload” and “mitigate future backlogs and errors.”
García spent just over a year in the role as the head of the labor department, which was beset by issues when Kansas’ unemployment skyrocketed as the coronavirus shut down businesses.
More than 300,000 Kansans have lost their jobs and filed for benefits through the Department of Labor, which was understaffed and had to add four times more people to work in the call center. Plus, Kansas’ unemployment website and telephone portals weren’t designed to handle such a heavy load, so people were slow to see the money.
Senate President Susan Wagle said she was glad Kelly "finally recognized the Department of Labor is broken" and is "waiting expectantly to see what the next chapter" of the agency.
A new Kansas Department of Labor report said Kansas has regained about a fifth of the jobs lost in the initial unemployment spike.
García could not immediately be reached for comment. Before joining Kelly’s cabinet, the Democrat was the first Latina elected to the Kansas Legislature, where she was a member of the House for six years.
Ryan Wright, the governor’s deputy chief of staff and who had been the liaison with the Labor Department, will lead the agency while the state looks for a permanent replacement.
This story was updated at 4:17 p.m. after the governor's news conference.
