Having led teams of people during life-and-death situations – as a Marine Corps officer and as an airline captain – I have to respond to the angry rant by state Sen. Dan Feltes (Monitor Opinion, April 27).
As a member of the Governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force, I have a bird’s-eye view of what Gov. Chris Sununu is doing for the people and businesses of New Hampshire: He is capably managing government resources, interfacing with federal authorities and leading the team of state agencies working nonstop to get us through this COVID-19 catastrophe. What he’s not doing is playing political games, filing lawsuits (which the court threw out last week) and playing the blame game.
Feltes claims that our Employment Security system is broken, and then tries blaming his false narrative on the governor. He conveniently neglected to tell you that as Senate majority leader, he advocated and voted for the budget that funded the very technology and personnel levels he’s trying to blame on the governor. Here are some facts:
Gov. Sununu expanded eligibility for workers impacted by COVID-19 on March 17 and started paying COVID-19 benefits on March 24 – before any other states and before Congress passed the CARES Act. Since March 17, the state processed over 141,000 new claims, paid out over $170 million in benefits covering 90% of claims, exceeding the last three years’ total payouts. Since April 17 the state has paid out over $107.8 million in federal FPUC benefits (the $600 payments) exceeding the total number of new claims filed in the last four years, while answering over 178,000 calls on the unemployment hotline.
Feltes’s desperate rant isn’t a threat to Gov. Sununu. It’s an outrageous insult to the hard-working men and women in state government who are going above and beyond, working 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday to get critical funds to our unemployed.
No one could have prepared for the economic carnage visited on the world by a corrupt Communist Chinese government. Resorting to shameless, self-serving political opportunism is not what leaders do in a crisis, when teamwork and solidarity are crucial.
When people in my district call me because they’re having problems filing for unemployment, I pick up the phone, call Employment Security and solve the problem. That’s what we do during a crisis – we work together to solve the problem. We don’t take shots at a governor who’s doing an exceptional job with the difficult, dangerous task of balancing public safety with its harsh economic consequences.
It’s not our Employment Security system that’s broken; it’s Dan Feltes’s self-serving rants that insult those who are head down and shoulder to the plow, hard at work in the trenches on behalf of the people of New Hampshire. We don’t need political opportunism in the midst of a global catastrophe. We need positive, constructive leadership committed to getting us out of this crisis and back to work as soon as possible – and that’s exactly what Chris Sununu is providing.
(Bob Giuda of Warren represents District 2 in the New Hampshire Senate.)