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The Senate's version of the unemployment compensation tax bill, debated since February, faces a bit of uncertainty after the Senate Budget Committee postponed action on the measure Tuesday. The House approved its version 81-36 in mid-March.
The bill provides tax relief for employers, and allows them to continue to have the option to pay unemployment compensation taxes in installments over next three years.
The committee met Monday and Tuesday, and does not yet have another meeting scheduled this week, normally the final week for bills to get through their final committee of reference so the can move on to the full Senate. However, by Senate rules, during the last two weeks of the session, a committee meeting may be called with four hours notice.
Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, presented an amended version of Senate Bill 728 to the committee that brings it more in line with the House bill. Detert told the panel that the revised measure takes the House position on expanding the definition of employee misconduct and violations of employers' rules, reduces unemployment compensation tax rates beginning in 2012, and allows employers wider latitude to fire workers who have committed crimes.
According to Detert's staff, she's still negotiating bill language with House members.
The bill also aims to make the Agency for Workforce Innovation more proactive in helping find employment for the nearly 1.1 million unemployed workers in the state. The agency would be required to do more to offer retraining opportunities, certification classes and match skills with careers. Claimants for unemployment compensation would be required “to make systemic and sustained effort to find work,” according to Detert.
In her presentation to the Budget Committee, Detert informed the panel that people who are not living in the state, are in jail or are not actively seeking work are collecting unemployment compensation.
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