“This is not because the department paid people too quickly,” Deputy Employment Security Commissioner Rich Lavers said Friday. “This is because people were certified as being eligible when in fact the information they were providing was incorrect.”

The remaining 5,172 workers, receiving $20.2 million in federal benefits, were found by the feds to be at fault for failing to provide required documentation. Those people were notified repeatedly to produce documents, he said.

In addition, another 4,486 people received payments that they shouldn’t have because of errors by their employers or Employment Security, Lavers said.

“If the overpayment was from the state program, and they are without fault, then they would have already been forgiven of the overpayment,” Lavers said.

“If the overpayment is from one of the federal programs, and they are without fault then currently the federal rules require them to individually request a waiver,” he said.

The state will be asking for a blanket waiver for all federal overpayments for people not at fault, Lavers said, now that the feds have released guidance offering more leeway. Lavers said he hopes to learn more at a question-and-answer session for states Wednesday.

He didn’t know how much money was at stake for the group found not personally at fault.

‘Verge on panic’

Overpayment letters sent to unemployment recipients left many on edge.

“Depending on the client’s financial situation, or employment situation, family situation, I think it can really verge on panic for some people,” said Marta Hurgin, a staff attorney for 603 Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm that gives free legal service to low-income people.

“It is shocking, and anxiety is a fair way to describe it,” Hurgin said.

Lavers said 91% of people receiving benefits were paid correctly “despite the total number of people collecting benefits being an unprecedented volume representing about 25% of the state’s workforce.”

The state paid 175,000 people benefits totaling more than $2 billion during 2020 and 2021. The maximum weekly checks surpassed $1,000 a week when a $600 federal supplement was added, providing payments that were higher in some cases than a worker’s normal paycheck.

The state heard more than 10,000 appeals last year (versus 2,000 a year before the pandemic) and is currently holding about 1,200 hearings a month.

Last year, two-thirds of decisions went against the person receiving benefits.

The state still has 4,900 cases awaiting hearing.

Back-dated benefits

Marshall Irving of Bow is among those winning appeals this month.

Irving was furloughed nearly two years ago and then told by his doctor to stay home until he could get fully vaccinated.

Along the way, Employment Security was wrongly informed by a third-party administrator his employer had hired that Irving had quit his job. The state demanded he repay $26,000 in benefits received during the pandemic.

But more than six months after appealing, Irving won his dispute this month and also will receive $3,000 in back-dated benefits.

“It was a great relief, although I didn’t have the funds to pay them (back) anyway,” said Irving, 71. “Maybe, set up a payment program that I might not have been able to outlive.”

The state detected 32,183 fraudulent claims filed using a stolen identity. Only 170 such claims were paid out for a total of $565,422 with the majority being payments from federal programs.

Early chaos

During the initial weeks when tens of thousands filed for unemployment, filers found trouble reaching Employment Security staffers to answer questions, leading to some wrong answers.

Ray Burke, co-director of the benefits project at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, said the new federal guidance suggests that states should factor in the chaotic times as a reason someone was not at fault for wrongly filling out a required weekly questionnaire to receive benefits.

Explaining the situation where record numbers were filing for benefits “has sometimes been a challenge with so many months going by and so far removed from some of the initial confusion, it’s sometimes, I think, been hard to get that across in hearings,” Burke said in an interview.

In a follow-up email, Burke said blanket waivers only solve part of the problem.

The state should wait to terminate someone’s benefits like they did with Irving “until a person’s appeal is resolved, and it’s clear they were overpaid before making any determination about whether they are eligible for a waiver, because if the overpayment demand was wrong in the first place, many people could receive additional benefits after winning their appeal,” Burke wrote.

“A waiver is really a last resort and shouldn’t become a shortcut that results in people seriously hurt by the pandemic forfeiting the full benefits they were entitled to,” Burke said.

New Hampshire Legal Assistance, which represents only a tiny fraction of those who might need to pay back benefits, has won 36 overpayment cases so far, totaling $360,481 during the pandemic.

Irving, who last year returned to his job visiting big-box stores servicing displays such as headphones that customers can test out, suggested people with overpayment notices “just be patient” and bring an attorney to their hearing.

“He kind of trusted the system to work itself out, and luckily, it did,” Hurgin of Legal Aid said. “But he went through a pretty long saga to get the benefits that he deserved.”