RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — The Virginia Employment Commission will be getting a new top official after the firing of current commissioner Ellen Marie Hess. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration confirmed with 8News on Tuesday that Hess had been let go.
Now that Hess has been removed from her position as commissioner, it is still unclear who will be taking her place. The commissioner is the agency’s top official, Youngkin has not announced if any other officials such as the two deputy commissioners will be fired yet.
According to the Associated Press, Virginia’s new secretary of labor, George “Bryan” Slater will oversee the overhaul of the VEC. Youngkin announced on Jan. 6 that Slater had been tapped for the job. He previously served as the secretary of administration under former Gov. Jim Gilmore.
As Youngkin prepared himself to take office he made promises to overhaul the VEC. Throughout the pandemic, many Virginians reported issues filing for unemployment, some going extended periods of time without crucial income.
During Northam’s administration, The Legal Aid Justice Center and other groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the VEC after the employment commission struggled to settle jobless claims in a timely manner. The lawsuit was filed against Hess in federal court.
The state was prompted to make upgrades to the outdated and overwhelmed system.
Those upgrades were made in November but by late December issues still persisted. Youngkin told 8News in an interview on Dec....
Claude and Mistral, AI models developed by US-based Anthropic and French company Mistral AI, respectively, repeated contested or false claims from Kremlin-aligned sites in roughly 70% of answers o...