La.: Pay back Katrina unemployment aid
BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana wants thousands of state and local government workers to send back $10 million in unemployment pay they received while still collecting regular pay after Hurricane Katrina.A state audit found lax control by the state
Department of Labor was the main reason the 5,439 ineligible workers were able to collect up to $258 a week, Legislative Auditor Steve Theriot said.
Administrative workers with the City of New Orleans received the most money with 2,233 wrongfully collecting $4.3 million. There were 1,638 state workers, many with the state Department of Health and Hospitals, who got $2.7 million.
The money was a small portion of the overall $560 million the department pay out in unemployment benefits to public and private workers in the four months after Katrina.
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