The potential for increases to the unemployment insurance tax on the state’s businesses prompted Governor Mark Sanford to call together what he calls an Unemployment Roundtable with the South Carolina Department of Commerce and leaders of all sized businesses from around the state. That meeting is set for Tuesday(beginning at 9:30, Brown Building in the Statehouse Complex).

Board of Economic Advisers Chairman John Rainey has been meeting with leaders of the Employment Security Commission, the Department of Commerce and others, to develop a plan for paying back the federal government for an Unemployment Insurance Fund deficit fast approaching $1 billion, and for rebuilding the state’s Unemployment Trust Fund.

Sanford asserts that the tax could be raised up to $567 per employee. He says there are alternatives.

Sanford has had a long-standing contention with the Employment Security Commission. A couple of times he withheld his signature from federal loan requests to cover unemployment checks for South Carolina workers. The governor tells the South Carolina Radio Network that now the reason for his concerns are coming into light. [Read more...]

Lt. Governor André Bauer is asking state leaders to join him in calling the General Assembly into special session to fix a problem he says is stopping South Carolina from drawing down free federal dollars that would extend 20 additional weeks of unemployment checks to thousands of jobless workers.

Bauer says more than 100,000 South Carolinians have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Bauer seeks the special session so the Legislature can swiftly amend the extended benefits statute to make technical changes to an economic index that triggers additional emergency checks. [Read more...]