Bridging the Gap

 

 

The Georgia Department of Labor’s HCTC Bridge Program may be able to assist you while you are waiting for HCTC advance payments to begin. The Bridge Program pays 65% of your health insurance premium if you qualify. You pay only the remaining 35%.

 

For more information of the Georgia Department of Labor’s HCTC Bridge Program please call 404-232-3672.

Employers Receive $100 Million Tax Cut

Commissioner Michael Thurmond announced recently that the majority of Georgia’s 200,000 employers would benefit from a $100 million unemployment insurance tax cut beginning in January 2007. This latest reduction in employer taxes brings the total employer tax savings to over $1.5 billion since 1999.

 

According to Thurmond, “This tax cut will provide additional fuel for Georgia’s economy. These additional tax reductions will leave more money in the hands of Georgia employers, helping to protect existing jobs and increasing the likelihood that new jobs will be created.”

 

Georgia has the second most solvent trust fund and the lowest unemployment insurance tax rates in the Southeast. Sound fiscal management of the state’s Unemployment Insurance program is a key factor in maintaining solvency and low tax rates. The U.S. Department of Labor recently cited the program’s performance as “exemplary”, stating that Georgia was the only state in the region to meet all ten of the acceptable levels of performance for the year ending March 31, 2006, and one of only 11 states to do so nationally.

 

“The cornerstone of our management strategy is to help Georgia’s unemployment insurance claimants get back to work as quickly as possible,” Thurmond said. As a result, Georgia has one of the lowest average claims durations in the nation. For the twelve months ending August 31, 2006, the average duration of Georgia claims was 11.2 weeks, while the national average was 15.2 weeks. By surpassing the national average by four weeks, the need for benefit payments was reduced by more than $172 million.

 

In addition to reducing taxes, the department has increased the maximum weekly benefit to the Southeast median. Since 1999, the maximum weekly benefit in Georgia has increased from $244 per week to the present rate of $320 per week, which represents a 31 percent increase.

 

IAWP (International Association of Workforce Professionals) Washington Update (January 2007)

The 109th Congress closed on the weekend of December 9th after passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) funding the government through February 15, 2007. Nine of eleven regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year, which began October 1, 2006, remained uncompleted. The largest and most significant of these was the annual Labor-HHS-Education funding bill, which included nearly all-federal employment and training programs.

 

Health, education and employment and training programs were pegged to their fiscal year 2006 funding levels in this temporary funding measure. This is, perhaps, the best outcome that could have been expected for federal employment and training programs since, for most of them, their current levels were higher than in the 2007 funding bills written by the outgoing House and Senate appropriations committees. This outcome also certainly eliminated what was very likely to be a Fiscal Year 2006 rescission of WIA funds, which means there was an extension of prohibitions regarding changes in local workforce area designations and against DOL’s plan to make changes in the definition of WIA administrative costs.

 

Before the 109th Congress adjourned, the incoming Democratic chairs of the appropriations committees in the 110th Congress (Rep. Obey and Sen. Byrd) announced they would not attempt passage of these uncompleted appropriations bills when the new Congress convened in January 2007. They will, instead, craft a yearlong CR to finance thirteen of the fifteen federal departments and numerous government agencies.

 

When the new Congress convened during the first week of January, the new Democratic leadership pursued a list of immediate priorities described as their “100 hour” agenda. The agenda items included issues that resonated with the voters in the recent election including raising the minimum wage, reducing interest rates on subsidized higher education loans, lobbying reforms and implementation of the 9-11 Commission recommendations. Reauthorization of WIA and other legislation within the jurisdiction of our committees was not included in this initial list of agenda items but WIA will be taken up in committee during the early months of the first Session. And before the 109th Congress adjourned, the two incoming Chairs of the Congressional education/workforce committees, Rep. George Miller, California and Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts, announced their priorities for the 110th Congress.

 

The following are the actions that were taken by the 109th Congress regarding workforce programs:

 

The House approved its WIA reauthorization bill on March 2, 2005. The bill also incorporated stand-alone legislation, the Worker Reemployment Accounts Act (H.R.26), introduced by Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV). Similar to a pilot project proposed by President Bush, the measure allows demonstration and pilot project funding under the Workforce Investment Act to be used by states and local workforce investment boards to offer personal reemployment accounts (PRAs) of up to $3,000 to help unemployed Americans return to work quickly. In addition, Rep. Chocola (R-IN) introduced a bill to amend the Federal Unemployment Tax Act to provide for the establishment of a demonstration program to permit states to experiment with administration of unemployment compensation programs.

 

Senate passage of S.1021, its WIA reauthorization bill, was by voice vote without debate in the very last moments before the July 4th recess. This raised hopes that perhaps WIA could be reauthorized. The agreement that facilitated the bill coming to the Senate floor and passing was very fragile, however. That agreement set aside from the Senate bill a provision contained in the House version of WIA reauthorization (HR27) that would permit faith-based groups receiving WIA funds to exclusively employ members of their own religious group. The Senate agreement called for a staff “pre-conference” during which it would be determined whether this faith-based issue could be resolved, and if so, to move to a formal conference. Unfortunately, there was no real progress toward resolving this stumbling block and so no conference committee was ever convened.