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Committee holds unemployment benefits rules after questions about childcare and deleted definitions
Summary
Legislators held docket 0901302401 to a time certain after asking whether removals from the "available to work" definition — including childcare references — remain enforceable and where those definitions will be located.
The Idaho House Commerce & Human Resources Committee voted to hold docket 0901302401, a rules package on unemployment insurance benefits administration, until Thursday, Feb. 27 after members questioned deletions from the "available to work" definition.
Janie Revere, director of the Idaho Department of Labor, again told the committee the changes came from the governor's zero-based regulation review and that the department "held negotiated rule making on these changes and received no negative feedback." She said there were no programmatic changes or fiscal impacts.
Representative Egbert asked why a sentence about childcare was removed from the definition of "available to work." The department brought up Josh McKenna, determinations administrator for the Department of Labor, who explained: "Folks are required to be available to accept a job. It doesn't mean that an individual that doesn't have childcare for a given hours of the day, wouldn't be eligible. It just is simply saying that if work is available to them, they need to be available to accept it." McKenna said the availability standard covers a range of obstacles such as childcare, transportation or being in school.
Committee members remained concerned that definitions removed from the rule text may now exist only in federal code or elsewhere without clear citations in the docket's authority section. The committee discussed options including referencing the federal source in the docket or keeping the definitions in rule to avoid ambiguity for legislators and the public.
Representative Holsclaw moved to hold the docket to a time certain (Feb. 27) so staff could provide clarifying citations and consider adjustments to improve consistency across dockets. The motion passed by voice vote; the committee agreed to revisit the docket at the time certain.
The hold preserves the current rule language while the department provides the committee with the requested clarifications on where removed definitions such as "claim" and "continued claim" are codified (presenters said several definitions are located in federal code and in department claimant guides).
