‘We have a duty to one another.’ Gov. Beshear vetoes bill cutting KY jobless benefits
Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday said he has vetoed House Bill 4, a measure sought by business groups that would cut jobless benefits for unemployed Kentuckians in order to spur them back into the workforce faster.
It was Beshear’s second high-profile veto of recent days. On Wednesday, he vetoed a resolution that would have ended Kentucky’s COVID-related state of emergency a month earlier than previously agreed upon because doing so apparently would cost the state $50 million in federal food stamp benefits for the poor.
In a video message posted online Friday morning, Beshear called HB 4 a “cruel bill ... that treats fellow Kentuckians in ways that do not meet our faith or our values.”
“What House Bill 4 would do is cut weeks of unemployment that folks who have worked maybe a decade in a career and then been laid off need to get back up on their feet,” Beshear said. “Remember, unemployment isn’t available to those that quit. This is for people that were working and suddenly, through no fault of their own, were suddenly having to find a new career.”
Thirty-nine states offer 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits, Beshear said. But HB 4 would reduce Kentucky’s benefits to half of that span, and it could force people to “take any job, not get back on the path to a career, in as few as six weeks,” he said.
Beshear also warned the bill could lead to the further depopulation of rural Western and Eastern Kentucky.
The bill would limit jobless benefits by tying them to a recent three-month statewide unemployment average. However, the local job market tends to be far worse in rural parts of the state than in urban centers like Louisville and Lexington. Without recognizing these geographic differences, the bill will pressure more people from rural areas to move to the cities in search of work, Beshear said.
Finally, the bill would burden the state’s unemployment insurance office with manpower and infrastructure demands in order to enforce new eligibility rules even as the state struggles to catch up with a jobless benefits backlog resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, Beshear said.
“Listen, we have a duty to one another during hard times to provide a hand up,” the governor said. “Our benefits aren’t overly generous. They are right in line with the rest of the nation. But this is callous. It will show the world that, sadly, we as a state care less about those that have fallen on hard times than other states.”
The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and other business groups lobbied hard for HB 4.
Sponsor Rep. Russell Webber, R-Shepherdsville, spoke out against Beshear’s veto.
Webber said in a statement that his bill seeks to grow Kentucky’s workforce and that he believes Kentuckians value work more than they value benefits like unemployment insurance.
“Kentuckians value work, they want to be independent, and they deserve an unemployment insurance program committed to helping them return to the workforce,” Webber said. “The Governor needs to stop normalizing the idea that Kentuckians want nothing more than to be dependent on state government when in reality they value hard work and want more for their lives.”
The House passed the bill 57-to-37. The Senate passed it 22-13. In both chambers, a handful of rural Republican lawmakers sided with members of the Democratic minority in opposition, citing many of the same arguments that Beshear made Friday.
The chambers can override a governor’s veto with simple majority votes.
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 11:25 AM.
