FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — A little over three weeks ago, the state of Kentucky contracted with Ernst & Young to help clear Kentucky's backlog of unemployment claims. After seeing satisfying results, Gov. Andy Beshear announced on Friday that Kentucky will extend its contract with EY for another five weeks.
"When we announced the contract with EY three and a half weeks ago, I said I hoped that we could get through 50,000 claims," Gov. Beshear said. "As of yesterday, EY had helped with more than 56,000 claims with two days to go on the current contract. Thus far, EY has met all of the expectations."
The cost of renewing the contract is $4.4 million. Both the new contract and original contract are coming from CARES Act funding. Gov. Beshear said he believes it would've taken three months for Kentucky to make the same amount of progress that
"If our staff were to drop everything and only work on the issues EY have been working on, it would've taken three months to do the work they have done in less than a month," Gov. Andy Beshear said. "That means in-person services would've stopped and we would've fallen further behind. But this new contract that continues and provides a group of employees that lessens a little bit by each week. It is going to help us catch up not on just initial claims, where we're doing much better, but also those issues that arise with the second and third payments where people made an error in requesting those. There are a significant amount of those out there and we think we can move through them very fast."
EY is known as being one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms in the world. Deloitte, PwC and KPMG are the other three.
