Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is ordering the Commonwealth to provide unemployment benefits to roughly 70,000 residents whose applications have been significantly delayed, the Washington Post reports.
The governor also plans to relieve businesses that had to lay off employees due to the coronavirus pandemic of $200 million in payroll taxes. The taxes would have helped replenish Virginia’s main unemployment fund, so officials are now banking on the federal government to do so.
Northam has directed the Commonwealth’s employment commission to “immediately begin distributing benefit[s] to [unemployment] applicants whose claims have been delayed in the determination process,” his office said in a release Tuesday. While the commission will still adjudicate the backlogged eligibility claims, applicants who are ultimately deemed ineligible would have to return their payments.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Northam’s office referred DCist to the release, but didn’t provide additional comment on the governor’s order. Megan Healy, Northam’s top workforce advisor, told the Post that Virginia was “the third-fastest state for getting benefits out to people who are eligible, but one of the slowest to getting them to those [initially deemed] ineligible.”
Virginia’s unemployment fund has been emptied of the $1.5 billion it held before the pandemic, owing to the roughly 1.4 million people who have filed jobless claims this year. As a result, the Commonwealth is borrowing from the federal government to bankroll the benefits.
It’s far from the only jurisdiction struggling to process a tsunami in unemployment applications because of COVID-19. In D.C., for example, thousands of residents have been forced to wait as the city’s Department of Employment Services reviews their claims. Meanwhile, more national coronavirus relief rests in the balance between the White House and Congress.
Northam’s payroll-tax break for hard-hit businesses means the Virginia Employment Commission can’t penalize them for layoffs that took place between April and June 2020. Generally, employers must pay taxes for each laid-off worker in order to keep the state’s unemployment fund afloat.
