Updated Thursday, Sept. 16, at 8:34 a.m.
State Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, Rep. Tiff Bluemle, D-Burlington, and Rep. Gabrielle Stebbins, D-Burlington, have called on Vermont Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington to resign following a snafu involving a planned $25 weekly unemployment benefit.
“[The Department of Labor] took a lifeline away from [Vermonters] due to willful incompetence,” Ram Hinsdale said in a Wednesday tweet. “It’s not the first time. Harrington should resign.”
Harrington offered an apology Tuesday at a hearing of the Legislature’s Unemployment Insurance Study Committee for not informing legislators in June that there could be a problem with the supplemental unemployment benefit signed into law June 1 by Gov. Phil Scott.
“If the primary concern is that we didn’t inform the Legislature in what they feel was a timely manner, I apologize,” Harrington said.
Ram Hinsdale said that it was hard for her to call for Harrington’s resignation, which was first reported by WCAX.
“To me, it’s the attitude that these are all just mistakes made over and over again, rather than a pattern of willful incompetence, in my mind,” Ram Hinsdale said in an interview with VTDigger on Wednesday. “I just don’t see Michael Harrington as being willing to be that partner to struggling Vermonters.”
Ram Hinsdale said she first considered asking Harrington to step down in March 2020 when thousands of Vermonters had their Social Security numbers sent to the wrong employer.
“I’m at the point where I believe I don’t have a partner,” she said.
Bluemle joined her colleague Wednesday night in calling for Harrington’s resignation.
“The mismanagement I have witnessed over the past year-and-a-half is simply stunning,” Bluemle said in an email to VTDigger. “The Commissioner’s failure to immediately notify legislative leaders what he learned from the feds was, for me, the last straw — and undermines any confidence I may have had that he will work in true partnership with the General Assembly.”
On Thursday morning, following publication of an earlier version of this story, Stebbins added her voice to the call for Harrington to step down.
“It simply doesn’t pass the straight face test that this withholding of information was an accidental oversight,” Stebbins wrote in an email to VTDigger. “To work together successfully, the legislative and administrative branches of government have to trust that information is being shared openly and transparently. He has betrayed that trust.”
The labor department did not respond to a request on Wednesday for an interview with Harrington.
Several legislators have said that had they known that the U.S. Department of Labor was indicating that there was a legal problem with the benefit, the Legislature could have fixed it before federal officials rendered a final decision that Vermont could not offer the benefit using Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund money.
Ram Hinsdale, Bluemle and Stebbins are the only three legislators known to have called for Harrington’s resignation.
Asked via text message if Harrington should resign, Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, who chairs the Unemployment Insurance Study Committee, replied that he eventually may have to.
“I think someone should hold him accountable for some problem solving and if he isn’t able to solve the problems before him — including how to satisfy legislative intent, then yes,” Korneiser said via text. “The legislature has made it very clear that we’re interested in being partners to solve the significant problems before us.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, legislators said it was the intent of the Legislature to get additional unemployment benefits out to Vermonters.
Others critical of Harrington stopped short of calling for his resignation.
“I would say that the qualified apology from the Commissioner is appreciated, [but] it is beyond comprehension how he can characterize his actions as a simple oversight,” Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, a member of the Unemployment Insurance Study Committee, said in an email to VTDigger on Wednesday. “He knew full well that this was a huge issue in the legislature and for tens of thousands of workers laid off through no fault of their own.”
“How he can keep this from every single person in the legislature, including leadership and staff, for almost 3 months, and claim it was not knowingly done, defies belief,” Sirotkin continued. “It constitutes a major breach of transparency and trust between the legislature and the executive branch.”
But Sirotkin stopped short of asking for Harrington’s resignation.
“First, I want to understand fully what happened here,” Sirotkin said. “I think we need to get to the bottom of this. … We need to know who knew what and when did they know it.”
“VTDOL sits on info from USDOL re: UI rules all summer while telling legislators all session we can’t do this, that or the other thing for workers b/c of the rusty mainframe,” Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, D-Burlington, said in a tweet.
Mulvaney-Stanak did not call for Harrington’s resignation in an interview with VTDigger on Wednesday.
“I wish it were as simple as removing one person,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “There is a leadership and culture problem at the Department of Labor. The governor needs to set a different course. It’s not just Harrington. We need a real leadership shift.”
Mulvaney-Stanak said the labor department is under-resourced.
