EDITORIAL: And the unemployment insurance fraud rolls on

The problems that plagued Nevada’s overwhelmed unemployment system during the pandemic have been well-documented. But from a taxpayer perspective, things could be much worse: We could be California.

Not only has the Golden State suffered from the same types of unresponsiveness and technical foul-ups that dogged Nevada’s jobless bureaucracy, the extent to which fraudsters in California ran amok has been nothing short of stunning.

The issue has become a problem for Gov. Gavin Newsom as he attempts to survive Tuesday’s recall.

According to a January report by San Francisco’s ABC affiliate, the state at that point had paid out as much as $31 billion in unemployment aid to criminals. That’s more than the “state spends each year on housing, transportation, higher education and environmental protection,” according to the online news organization CalMatters.

“There is no sugarcoating the reality,” Julie Su, secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, said during a news conference in January. “California did not have sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud.”

Ms. Su has since been aptly rewarded for her ability to deflect responsibility. In July, the Senate confirmed her nomination to serve as the Biden administration’s deputy labor secretary. Go figure.

While states were indeed hit with an unprecedented jobless catastrophe when pandemic restrictions swamped the economy 18 months ago, California apparently lacked even the most rudimentary fraud protections, such as cross-checking applications against prison rolls. As a result, the state paid out more than $400 million in unemployment checks written in the name of inmates.

“Recent state audits and cybersecurity experts stress that much of the fraud could have been relatively easily prevented by better vetting applications,” CalMatters noted in a February analysis.

In July, the state hired a former federal prosecutor to serve as general counsel to assist in an investigation of unemployment fraud. But while there will likely be successes tracking down a handful of perpetrators, they will almost certainly be overwhelmed by the failures.

Meanwhile, will anyone in the bureaucracy pay a price for this incompetence? Had such spectacular failures occurred in the private sector, consequences would be inevitable. But in the cozy world of government employment, accountability is a foreign word. Ms. Su has snuggled right into Joe Biden’s Washington while other agency leaders remain on track to collect their generous lifetime pension payouts. After all, who cares when it’s only somebody else’s money?