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The Washington state auditor reported that a December data breach could have exposed the personal information of 1.6 million Washingtonians who applied for unemployment benefits last year. While the auditor said the ESD is not responsible for the breach, it follows a line of scandals.

State representative Jesse Young, Republican from Gig Harbor, joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss how the ESD is handling this, and his issues with Gov. Inslee supporting departing head Suzi LeVine.

“They had their major breach this summer with the Nigerian scandal that cost us over half a billion dollars. That has led to each representative in the state being deluged with calls from people begging for help to get their unemployment checks. They’ve been going for months without unemployment checks, and veterans, family providers trying to put food on the table have not been able to get checks,” he said.

New WA data breach exposes personal info of 1.6 million people who applied for unemployment

“And we have been basically shackled as legislators trying to get any type of support from them because the governor not only didn’t address the initial issue with Ms. LeVine — and let her go and put someone in place that could fix the problem — we find out that probably one of the reasons now that these people have not been getting checks for months is because they’ve been investigating this other failure,” he continued.

Young says that Governor Inslee has done little to address the issue, and needs to begin a more transparent process.

“The governor did nothing but support the promotion of her to the Biden administration while people were literally struggling. To me, it’s the end of the rope. This is either massive indifference from the governor’s office or shared incompetence. And this is a step too far. The governor needs to get his act together,” he said.

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“I propose that the governor, either, a, specifically commit to and begin transparently going through the process to hire a competent leader for ESD, both in front of the press and the Legislature, or step aside immediately, resign and let the lieutenant governor do so,” Young said. “Take your choice, Governor. Real people are hurting.”

Do we know if any information has actually been stolen, or is it purely that some information might have been exposed?

“Well, that’s the worst part about this, right? Because if you even go to the auditor’s website there, they’re still tipping their hands that there’s more to come,” Young replied. “They haven’t fully completed their investigation. I think it’s completely suspect that they’re finally letting this cat out of the bag a week after Ms. LeVine moves on to the Biden administration. Clearly, they knew about this, and were investigating it.”

“My question to Governor Inslee would be how could you — knowing this, even through back channel, even if it wasn’t publicly available to the rest of us — support her being promoted to an even more dangerous position given her level of incompetence at the department? I mean, he’s done President Biden a disservice.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.