SALEM — The Oregon Employment Department erroneously paid about $100,000 in unemployment benefits to 155 Eastern Oregon school district staff who were furloughed last spring, according to the Baker School District.

Now, the state wants the money back.

The district learned about the problem last week, said Michelle Glover, the schools’ business manager. She said the overpayments amounted to between $630 and $730 per employee.

The state isn’t demanding that workers repay it now, according to Glover. But if they don’t fork it over, the state will deduct the funds from any future unemployment claims those staffers make.

“This is going to be a hardship on our staff,” Glover wrote in an email Thursday, Sept. 3.

The employment department has struggled to administer its benefits program throughout the pandemic. It declined to address this latest issue, saying state law prevents it from discussing unemployment claims at any organization — even school districts and other public entities that are normally subject to public records disclosure.

The origin of the issue in Baker City is extremely complex.

The Baker City schools, like other districts around the state, furloughed employees for one day a week when the pandemic hit last spring to save money in anticipation of a fall budget crunch. The Baker School District and many other Oregon school districts tapped into the state’s Work Share program to compensate employees for the lost wages.

(In many cases, employees actually got a raise during their furloughs thanks to the $600 weekly unemployment bonus Congress authorized in March.)

Work Share requires that participating employers furlough their employees for at least 20% of their work week, with a 40-hour limit on the work week. The Baker School District, though, usually operates on a four-day-a-week schedule — no school on Fridays.

And because of a quirk of the calendar, the district didn’t meet that 20% threshold for the week in May that included Memorial Day.

The school district said it wasn’t aware of the 40-hour maximum, and the employment department overlooked it, too. Glover said the department has acknowledged that this was, at least partially, the state’s mistake.

Now, though, she said the burden falls on employees.

Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, raised the Baker City issue Sept. 3 at a legislative hearing on the crisis at the employment department. Oregon owes backlogged jobless benefits to tens of thousands of laid-off workers and tens of thousands more went for long periods without benefits early in the pandemic as the employment department struggled to cope with the unprecedented volume of claims.

Findley said the Baker City issue is indicative of broader problems at the department.

“The state leadership has failed to provide oversight with adequate follow-up with this agency,” Findley said.

This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.