KY lawmakers get bill that would soften jobless benefits cuts they passed in 2022

The General Assembly is poised to soften some of the cuts it made last year to Kentucky’s unemployment insurance benefits.

Republican state Rep. Russell Webber of Shepherdsville on Tuesday filed House Bill 146. The bill would — among other things — restore four weeks of the jobless benefits that were taken away when the legislature passed his controversial House Bill 4 during the 2022 session.

Webber, who is chairman of the House Economic Development and Workforce Investment Committee, did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Last winter, under pressure from business groups clamoring for job applicants, the GOP-led legislature passed Webber’s HB 4 to spur laid-off workers back into the labor pool faster. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed it, calling it “a cruel bill,” but lawmakers overrode his veto.

The new law cuts the maximum duration for unemployment insurance payments, down to 12 weeks from the traditional 26 weeks, by “indexing” it, or tying it to the statewide unemployment average during a recent three-month span.

Also, it adds rules requiring people to apply for work more often than before and to accept a “suitable” job more quickly if it’s available within 30 miles of their home, even if the pay is much lower than their last job and it doesn’t match their skills or experience.

After the bill passed, the U.S. Department of Labor sent a seven-page letter to the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet raising concerns over various ways the new law appears to contradict federal regulations.

For example, the Labor Department wrote, one section of HB 4 seems to let the General Assembly on its own authority end Kentucky’s participation in federal unemployment benefits for workers who lose their jobs because of foreign imports or federally declared disasters. That would be “a significant deviation” from how states usually operate, the Labor Department wrote.

“We request further conversation to better understand how the state will implement this change,” the Labor Department wrote.

With his new measure, HB 146, Webber tries to clarify language from his previous bill to address several of the concerns raised by the Labor Department.

He also would increase the minimum period that jobless benefits would be available in Kentucky, raising it from 12 weeks to 16 weeks, if the average statewide unemployment rate was less than or equal to 6.5 percent. One week of benefits would be added with each additional 0.5 percent in average statewide unemployment, up to a maximum of 24 weeks.

“It’s a slight softening of an otherwise harsh bill in order to get into alignment with federal requirements. Any step back to 26 weeks is an improvement, albeit a very modest one in this case,” said Dustin Pugel, policy director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in Berea.