Commissioner Mitch Melas of the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) told a Senate committee that the agency has reduced backlogs, improved the speed of eligibility decisions and first payments, and rolled out digital tools to speed customer access to unemployment benefits.

Melas said Virginia now exceeds federal timeliness benchmarks: about 87.2% of first payments go out within the 21-day metric and more than 88% of eligibility decisions are issued within 21 days. "We've made filing faster, more secure and more intuitive for Virginians," Melas said, citing the VEC's partnership with id.me and a new digital lobby website that integrates a virtual assistant, Ask VEC.

The improvement matters because faster determinations and payments reduce hardship for claimants and lower administrative strain during high-volume periods. Melas told the committee the commission also has shortened appeal processing times: commission‑level appeals that once averaged more than 100 days are now typically completed in under a month.

VEC officials described several operational changes behind those numbers. Susan Landis, VEC's director of unemployment insurance, said appeals backlogs created during the pandemic required manual interventions and, in some cases, issuance of paper checks, which temporarily extended payment times to about 60 days for older appeals. "As we work through that process," Landis said, "if I file a claim for unemployment benefits two months ago, I'm denied benefits, I file my appeal ... we're back to now about a week to get that payment" for current cases.

Agency leaders credited multiple reforms: identity verification through id.me, robotic process automation to remove repetitive manual steps, a redesigned customer website and multilingual AI video guides, and an in-house knowledge base and customer-relationship tracking system developed by the VEC contact center. The VEC said online initial claim filing rose from roughly 34% to about 80% in two years and incoming calls have fallen 79% while callback success rates hold around 87%.

Melas described a centralized risk-management approach that unifies fraud prevention, cybersecurity, compliance and continuity planning under a chief risk officer; the office has completed a pilot and will run a full stress test next month. He said the VEC has also strengthened financial resilience after a roughly 57% reduction in federal UI base grant funding since the pandemic. To bridge funding gaps, the VEC took a $10,000,000 treasury loan and the 2024 state budget created a $30,000,000 line of credit that the agency may draw with approval of the secretary of labor and secretary of finance. The General Assembly also approved an administrative fee that took effect Jan. 1, 2025; Melas characterized the fee as a reallocation of existing revenue rather than a tax-rate increase and said the rate is 0.05% of an employer's taxable wages.

Melas provided preliminary counts related to recent federal furloughs and the partial federal shutdown. He said the agency tracked approximately 1,250 initial claims recorded from Oct. 1–15, of which about 900 appear related to furloughs. He added that, since January, VEC-confirmed UCFE (Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees) claims totaled about 1,234 with roughly 190 continuing UCFE claims; broader, looser monitoring flags identified larger counts when including federal contractors (the VEC's top-100 contractors list returned about 4,000 associated claims since January and the top-500 list about 7,800 since January, per the presentation).

Committee members asked for additional breakdowns. Senator Eban asked what proportion of decisions resulted in payments versus denials; VEC staff said that data are not on hand at the meeting but that they report it monthly and quarterly and would provide it on request. On overpayments, Susan Landis said the VEC mails a waiver application to a claimant at the same time a non‑fraud overpayment decision is issued and the waiver form is also available in the claimant portal.

On eligibility standards for claimants reporting self-employment, Melas said the VEC is completing legal research connected to a Virginia Supreme Court decision involving Amazon; formal updated guidance is not complete but is anticipated by November. Melas emphasized that the Supreme Court matter prompted the review and that final guidance will follow that research.

Melas closed by noting operational metrics are monitored in daily/weekly cadence meetings that front-line staff lead, and that the VEC continues work on automation, fraud detection and customer access while preparing for a full stress test of resilience systems.

The committee did not take formal votes on these matters; staff follow-ups were requested for some data points (for example, the percentage of timely decisions that were approved versus denied).