Paid Leave Oregon says average wait is 29 days - but some applicants wait months
PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Some Paid Leave Oregon applicants say they are waiting months to get their claims processed; the state agency, on the other hand, says it takes 29 days on average to process claims and pay them out.
Paid Leave Oregon says it has managed to reduce its claim processing time by 10 days, on average.
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But applicants who have called or emailed KATU complaining it’s taking much longer say they are getting little to no information about why.
Karen Hale broke her arm slipping on ice during the winter storm in January. She says she had to go back to work sooner than her doctor initially recommended because she hasn’t managed to get her paid leave claim to go through.
“I basically begged my doctor to let me do light duty, even though it was like two weeks out from surgery, because I had no money coming in,” she said.
Hale applied Jan. 23 and says she checked her mail and her email in the program’s online system.
“There is a tab saying action needed, and there was always like a green checkmark saying no action needed,” she said.
She says two weeks later she got a letter in the mail saying she was denied benefits.
“I called them and was like, ‘What do you need? How come my claim got denied?’ And they said, ‘Oh, you just need to send us proof of ID,’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you tell me that?’”
Paid Leave Director Karen Humelbaugh says the average claim is not taking this long.
“Many times we are waiting on documentation from them or something that is extra that we need,” she said.
The 29-day average wait time breaks down as follows: Four days for ID verification, 10 days for employer review, 13 days to review the application and two days to payment.