South Carolina Statehouse Blog

“While I cast my vote today to make the necessary changes that ensure benefits continue to flow to our unemployed, it should not be forgotten that earlier this year two very real opportunities to make changes to our employment system were missed, once with the defeated Employment Security Commission reform bill, which would have made this change months ago, and a second time with the alternative budget that would have restored $200 million to the unemployment trust fund.  Today’s situation could and should have been avoided.

In January, our focus must be on reforms that will prevent the type of dysfunction we’ve seen at the ESC from causing these problems again in the future.  We need real accountability measures in place, measures that ensure no benefits are given out to those who don’t complete applications, that explanations are given as to why ‘misconduct’ payments have increased $100 million in just two years, and that mandatory ‘red-flag’ provisions exist to let us know when our trust fund balance is dangerously low.  And most importantly, we need our unemployment system to be focused first, last, and always on marrying the 12 percent of our workers who are unemployed with the 44,000-plus unfilled South Carolina jobs and quickly putting our people back to work.”