North Cook News

Northfield Township Committeeman T.J. Brown is calling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to do more to bring structure to the long-troubled Illinois Department of Employment Security office.

“I would like to see the governor really dive into this and create more efficiency in that office,” Brown told the North Cook News. “The amount of fraud that has occurred is mind boggling.”

Brown speaks from painful experience, relaying an episode he recently had where his own identity was apparently hijacked and a fraudulent claim was entered in his name.

“I received a claim letter from IDES in October and two days later they sent me a debit card,” he added. “I called the number on the card to report fraud or whatever and all they did was take my phone number. It wasn’t until mid-November when someone called me back. My employer got half- dozen or more fraudulent claims.”

Brown says much of the blame for all the dysfunction has to fall squarely at the feet of Pritzker.

“I think the thing that’s really aggravating is the amount of unemployment claims now are because the governor’s restrictions related to COVID 19,” he said. “A lot of people are hurting who need unemployment, some lifeline. Instead we’ve got resources going to trying to ferret out what’s legitimate and what’s not. I’m just shocked that no one has put in some type of major, emergency initiative to clean up that office and create a better way to prevent the fraud and get the aid to those who need it the most.”

Brown said the task should be simple given it’s one he would think everyone in Springfield would stand behind.

“It should be a nonpartisan issue to make things reasonably easy to navigate when someone wants to do it legally, but have some fail-proof way to keep someone from fraudulently using the system,” he said. “Instead, we don’t see a lot of urgency and this is hurting those who need help the most.”