OKLAHOMA CITY – As Oklahoma’s economy recovers from the global coronavirus pandemic, a measure to cut the number of weeks a jobless Oklahoman can collect unemployment benefits is advancing through the Legislature.
A reduction in the maximum period of financial assistance – from 26 weeks to 20 – is proposed in House Bill 1933 by Rep. Ryan Martinez, former field representative in Washington, D.C., for U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe.
The bill specifies that the duration of unemployment compensation claims submitted during a calendar year would be limited to:
Ÿ 12 weeks if the state’s average unemployment rate is at or below 3 percent.
Ÿ An additional week could be added to the 12 weeks for each one-half percent increment in the state’s average unemployment rate above 3 percent.
Ÿ The maximum period for collecting unemployment benefits would be capped at 20 weeks.
HB 1933 passed the House of Representatives, 70-20, and was transmitted to the Senate, where it was assigned to the Business, Commerce and Tourism Committee.
A similar proposal, Senate Bill 788 by Sen. James Leewright, R-Bristow, has not advanced since it was assigned to the same Senate committee on Feb. 2.
Another similar measure was HB 3096 filed in 2019. That bill, by then-Representative now Senator Zack Taylor, R-Seminole, would have limited unemployment benefits to 12 weeks under certain conditions, and would have capped the benefit duration at 20 weeks.
The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission estimated that jobless benefits in 2019 would have been reduced by approximately $120 million under similar conditions proposed in HB 3096, the House fiscal staff reported.
Taylor’s bill passed the House but died in the Senate’s Business, Commerce and Tourism Committee.
An unemployment measure filed last year was Senate Bill 84 by Sen. Chuck Hall, R-Perry. It would instruct the OESC to review unemployment compensation in order to develop a method that ties unemployment benefits and employer contribution rates to the economic conditions and employment rates of the state. SB 84 was assigned to the Senate Business, Commerce and Tourism Committee, where it died.
Senate Bill 1756, which was filed this year, proposed a Jobseeker’s Assistance Program that would be administered by the OESC. It would provide a weekly cash benefit and intensive employment services to new labor market entrants, re-entrants, workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, self-employed workers, and intermittent workers with limited resources.
Program applicants would have to be at least 24 and have a GED or high school diploma. They also would have to earn an annual household income below the Social Security maximum taxable earnings for the year in which the benefits were received.
SB 1756, by Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, also died in the Senate’s Business, Commerce and Tourism Committee.
A measure that directly affects the OESC was Senate Bill 789, which was signed into law by Governor Stitt on April 19, 2021.
SB 789 authorizes the OESC, during a declared state of emergency that directly and adversely impacts the unemployment compensation fund causing it to drop below $25 million, to claim up to 25% of federal emergency relief funds made available to the state, decrease the surcharge charged to each employer, and borrow federal funds. It also will allow the balance in the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund to shrink below $25 million but not less than $10 million.
When a state of emergency does not directly impact the fund, the OESC is required by SB 789 to assess and collect a surcharge for the calendar quarter in which the fund drops below $25 million in order to keep the fund balance at $25 million.
The current balance in the UI trust fund is $220 million, Zumwalt said.
Senate Bill 794, which was signed into law last May, allows the OESC and the state Department of Human Services to share information required to identify individuals who are delinquent in their child support payments; the OESC is authorized to withhold unemployment benefits equal to the child support that’s in arrears. In addition, the law makes it the fiduciary duty of OESC to return overpayments received in the Employer’s Unemployment Tax Account.