A fast-moving bill before the Ohio House purports to “reform” the state’s debt-burdened unemployment insurance system. Its ideas for needed change primarily include slashing benefits to jobless workers and making it harder to receive even that reduced compensation, without permanently solving the system’s problems. That’s not reform.
The bill, sponsored by House Majority Floor Leader Barbara Sears (R., Monclova Township), would cut the maximum number of weeks an unemployed worker could collect benefits from the current 26 to as few as 12 — the lowest in the nation — depending on the state’s jobless rate. The measure would not affect current recipients of benefits.
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The legislation also would restore a provision that state lawmakers voted unanimously to eliminate in 2007, which required the deduction of Social Security payments from unemployment compensation. If Ohio returns to that practice, it will be the only state with such a policy. The bill would go even further than the regressive North Carolina law on which it is based.
These changes, and other noxious ones, would promote job creation and “a healthier and more successful Ohio,” Representative Sears asserts. That analysis is based on a misreading of the problems with the state’s unemployment insurance program.
The state has mismanaged the system for years by refusing to collect adequate payroll taxes from Ohio employers to pay for jobless benefits. Since 2009, the unemployment trust fund has borrowed more than $2 billion — much of it with tax-subsidized interest — from the federal government to remain solvent. The state still owes about $775 million on that debt, which it plans to finish paying off in 2017.
Yet instead of permanently shoring up the trust fund, the House bill would raise employer tax rates only temporarily. At the same time, it would cut rates for some employers.
About 50,000 Ohioans collect unemployment payments; weekly benefits range from $118 to $572, depending on a jobless worker’s previous wages and number of dependents. Not a king’s ransom, but it keeps many families from destitution, hunger, and homelessness. Ms. Sears’ bill would eliminate additional benefits for larger families, capping maximum benefits for all workers at $431 a week.
The bill also would deny benefits for “just cause” to workers who failed or refused to take a drug test, did not comply absolutely with an employee manual, or even were locked out by an employer. It would impose tougher eligibility limits on low-income workers who could find only part-time jobs.
The liberal advocacy group Policy Matters Ohio notes that fewer Ohioans collect jobless benefits today than at any previous time in the past four decades — well below the national rate. It observes that workers spend their benefits promptly, strengthening local economies across the state.
Ohio’s economy hasn’t rebounded and its job climate hasn’t improved to the extent that state government can afford to reduce safety-net protections for workers and families who already are enduring economic hardship. Fixing the state’s unemployment insurance system requires a balanced, equitable approach, and the participation of employers as well as employees.
Representative Sears’ bill does not do that, and should not become law.
First Published November 15, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
