PIKE COUNTY LOSES $10,314 UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIM AFTER MISSED PHONE HEARING

PITTSFIELD — Pike County has lost a contested unemployment claim totaling $10,314 after failing to participate in a scheduled telephone hearing with an administrative law judge, according to information and documentation published by Pike County Zombie Control.

Catherine Rafferty of the Pike County Clerk’s Office reportedly told county officials that the hearing had been scheduled by telephone, that employees in the office knew they were expecting the call, and that the call never came.

Roughly ten days later, the county received notice that it had failed to participate in the hearing. As a result, the unemployment claim was allowed.

The circumstances raise an obvious question: What happened to the scheduled call?

One possibility is that the administrative law judge or hearing officer attempted the call but was unable to successfully connect with the county.

Another possibility is that the call reached the county’s telephone system but was missed, misrouted or otherwise not answered.

At this point, there is not enough publicly available information to determine which occurred.

The issue becomes more notable because Pike County Zombie Control also cited an April email in which the Clerk’s Office raised concerns about the additional workload involved in handling contested unemployment claims.

According to that documentation, the office indicated that unemployment contests were being handled as additional work without additional compensation. The email also raised the possibility that statutory duties of the Clerk’s Office could take priority over fighting an unemployment claim, potentially leaving the county financially responsible.

County officials also reportedly discussed whether responsibility for the unemployment work should be included under a risk-management stipend.

Those discussions do not establish why the hearing was missed.

They do, however, provide additional context surrounding a process failure that has now cost Pike County $10,314.

One potential way to determine what happened would be to examine the county’s telephone system logs or call-detail records from the date and time of the scheduled hearing.

Those records could potentially show whether an incoming call connected with the hearing ever reached county telephone lines.

If no such call appears, that would support the Clerk’s Office account that the expected call never came through.

If a call does appear, additional questions would remain about what happened after it reached the county telephone system.

Either way, Pike County lost its opportunity to contest a $10,314 unemployment claim because the county did not participate in the scheduled hearing.

For taxpayers, the unanswered question remains simple:

Did the call ever reach Pike County?