It’s been a tough year to manage a state unemployment agency, and unemployment officials in at least eight states now have resigned or been fired during the pandemic.
The latest is Ken Lawson, who resigned as director of Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity on Monday. The department has responsibility for paying unemployment benefits in Florida, although Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) assigned a different state agency head to oversee those benefits in April amid criticism of lengthy delays in getting the payments to laid-off workers.
Lawson joins counterparts from as far away as Hawaii and Nevada, where Scott Murakami and Heather ...