CLAYTON, Mo. – A St. Louis County resident is calling for tough action against the state over its efforts to reclaim millions of pandemic dollars the state claims were overpaid to recipients. Citizens describe the state’s actions as punitive and uncaring to those who have already suffered through the pandemic.

Resident Sheneather Rich is calling for those impacted to fight back. She says her life has taken a terrible turn because of Missouri’s efforts to claw back pandemic funds from her. She received a letter telling her to repay $5,400 to the state.

Not long afterwards, Rich got another letter threatening to garnish her income if she didn’t repay the money, which she says she doesn’t have. She’d applied for unemployment at the time.

But instead of the $320 a week going to Rich, the state took the money and applied it to the debt officials say she owed. She says citizens need to fight back.

“Some people like myself lost everything because I had no income at that time. I couldn’t give my landlord no money, couldn’t pay my car note. I couldn’t do nothing,” she said. “I had to resort to getting food stamps to eat, had to move out, got evicted, move out and live with my daughter, so my thing is this; when you edit this, I want to know, Governor Parson, state of Missouri, refund everybody their money that you took from them, or else we need to do a class-action lawsuit.”

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The state’s collection efforts had an impact on tens of thousands of Missourians, including many in the St. Louis area. The federal government forgave the money it was owed.

Lawmakers wanted the state of Missouri to do the same. But Governor Mike Parson opposed that, saying people who were overpaid should pay back the state taxpayers’ money.

“It’s over 30,000 of us in this position and I feel like the state of Missouri should have forgiven us. Stop taking the people back through four years ago. We’re still living from the past, we’re still paying for four years ago, and we’re still being affected by our income checks being garnished. People can’t afford to do this, everything is going up, and the people are still hurting.”

Despite the governor’s opposition, the state legislature did take action to give Missourians a break. The House passed legislation to give citizens a pass on repaying the money, but with the governor not on board, that effort failed in the Senate.

“State of Missouri, Governor Parson, hear me! You guys should have forgiven Missourians when the federal government forgiven us,” Rich said. “We should not be paying this back through no fault of our own. We shouldn’t be garnished. They shouldn’t take our income.”

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