Ken Lawson announced his resignation Monday as executive director of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
Lawson had been moved aside earlier this year by Governor Ron DeSantis after the state’s unemployment system was overwhelmed by coronavirus-caused job losses.
During a press conference at the University of South Florida in Tampa Monday, DeSantis said a replacement could be named as soon as Tuesday.
"We'll have a new secretary there and I think it'll be good, and I think that there's some things that need to change in that agency and we want to make sure that we can," said DeSantis.
Lawson's resignation is effective after the close of business Tuesday. He said he was stepping down in what he called the “spirit of turning the page and moving forward.”
Lawson, a holdover from former Governor Rick Scott’s administration and a member of DeSantis’ pre-inauguration transition team, did not announce any future plans.
DeSantis picked Lawson to lead the Department of Economic Opportunity in December 2018. At the time, Lawson was part of DeSantis’ pre-inauguration transition team and helped author a memo that warned of the “capabilities” of the unemployment system.
The state’s CONNECT online unemployment system largely crashed after the coronavirus pandemic hit the state in March, causing businesses to shut down or dramatically scale back.
DeSantis put Department of Management Services Secretary Jonathan Satter in charge of the CONNECT system on April 15, as the state was at its peak of coronavirus-related unemployment claims, with more than 500,000 first-time claims filed that week. Since mid-March, more than 3.8 million claims have been filed.
Just over a week before the agency shakeup, Lawson apologized during a Zoom teleconference with a couple of state lawmakers about the system’s failures, which included the online system going down as people filled out applications and a large number of people being deemed ineligible for benefits.
To handle the rapid increase in claims, the department opened a backup online site for new claims and allowed people to fill out paper applications. The department also scrambled to bring in computer servers and hired contractors and shifted state employees to handle the new data and answer phone calls from applicants.
DeSantis later contended there had been an “animating philosophy” in putting the CONNECT system together to discourage people seeking jobless benefits. He also directed the state’s inspector general to conduct a review of the system, which cost nearly $78 million and started operating in 2013.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, used Lawson’s resignation Monday to call for the entire unemployment system to be revamped.
"We haven’t seen Ken Lawson or Secretary (Jonathan) Satter in months --- as far as I’m concerned, he wasn’t even at DEO anymore, but he was probably still taking a paycheck, and I’m sure his payments were always on time, which is not the case for unemployed Floridians fighting for their benefits,” Eskamani said in a statement. “To this day, we see new unemployment claims come our way, including from Floridians who haven’t seen a dime and others who are missing weeks of back pay. We need to completely dismantle and rebuild DEO with new people and policies.”
In addition to overseeing the unemployment system, the Department of Economic Opportunity is involved in issues such as economic development, disaster recovery and workforce statistics.
Lawson served as secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation under Scott before taking over as head of Visit Florida in January 2017, as the tourism-marketing agency faced a controversy that included House leaders exposing an expired $1 million contract with Miami rapper Pitbull to promote the state.
