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Iowa newspaper slams governor over unemployment services kiosks

February 24, 2017

The Des Moines Register has criticized Gov. Terry Branstad administration's handling of unemployment services kiosks that were intended to replace the services of 36 unemployment offices closed in 2011. The state has since quietly abandoned the 700 kiosks, as Kiosk Marketplace reported earlier this month.

The fact that Branstad would shutter the unemployment offices and then pull the plug on his much-vaunted kiosk system, all while claiming to be Iowa's job-creation governor, is surprising, the editorial noted. But what's even more interesting is Iowa Workforce Development's response to questions about the kiosks.

The agency says it doesn't know how many of the kiosks are still providing unemployment assistance to the public, and adds that it can't even say when it discontinued support for the program.

This is the sort of response that forces taxpayers to choose between two intolerable scenarios: Either IWD's leaders aren't being truthful and are simply refusing to admit what they've been up to, or those leaders are being honest and they don't know what they are doing, the editorial observed.