Area Democrats protest GOP unemployment stance

When Albemarle County resident Alexa Bergen Farber was laid off from her job at a healthcare publishing company in February, she immediately sought unemployment benefits.
Yet the local Virginia Employment Commission was so backlogged, Farber said, she heard nothing about her benefits application for five weeks.
While waiting for her check to arrive, Farber fretted that she would be unable to afford rent, medical bills, groceries or any of the expenses related to her hunt for a new job.

Farber appeared Monday at a news conference sponsored by the Democratic Party of Virginia to express her umbrage at GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell and Republicans in the House of Delegates for their decision to forgo $125 million in the federal economic stimulus package to expand unemployment benefits in Virginia.
“They have turned their back on thousands of Virginians like me who have lost their jobs,” Farber said.
On April 8, the General Assembly narrowly voted down a bill that would have permanently expanded Virginia’s unemployment assistance system to include part-time workers and out-of-work people who are enrolled in job skills training. The changes would have qualified Virginia to collect the $125 million included in the stimulus package.
Republicans — including Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle — opposed the measure because they worried it would lead to a tax increase on business owners after the stimulus money dried up after two years.

“The concern is that by increasing the cost for employers, you’re making it harder for them to employ people,” Bell said. “That can cost jobs.”
Lawmakers from both parties, Bell pointed out, did enact several major expansions of the unemployment benefits system in April. They passed measures that extend the duration of unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 59 weeks. They also agreed to spend federal stimulus funds to offset the cost of health insurance for people who are laid off. And they postponed a scheduled increase in the minimum qualifications for unemployment benefits.
“All of these [measures] are going to expire when the current economic crisis expires,” Bell said.
Bell also pointed out that nearly every business advocacy group in Virginia opposed permanently expanding benefits.
Democrats, such as Albemarle County resident Cynthia Neff, who is challenging Bell in this fall’s general election, are calling on Bell and other lawmakers to return to Richmond to expand Virginia’s unemployment benefits system so the state can qualify for the federal funding.
“Now, more than ever, our families — our citizens of this great commonwealth — need the support system that comes from unemployment benefits,” Neff said.
Neff called the Republicans’ reasons for opposing the expansion of unemployment benefits a “smokescreen.”
“It’s much ado about nothing,” she said. “Three hundred thousand people are out of work in Virginia. Let’s make sure we get this money that can help them.”
The Charlottesville region’s unemployment rate has doubled from 2.8 percent in March 2008 to 5.7 percent in March of this year. More than 6,000 out-of-work Charlot-tesville-area residents were seeking employment in March, according to the VEC.

An expansion of unemployment benefits would actually cost businesses an estimated $4.58 per employee per year, said Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Chairman David L. Slutzky.
“That’s nothing,” said Slutzky, a prominent local Democrat. “As a small-business owner myself, I’d be thrilled to pay this.”
Bell, however, said he suspects the cost would almost certainly be substantially higher per employee.
Charlottesville Vice Mayor Julian Taliaferro, also a Democrat, said the expansion of unemployment benefits should not be a partisan issue when the economic downturn continues to nix thousands of jobs.

“Somehow this has become a political issue,” he said. “This should not be a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. It’s about people, not politics.”
Farber and the Democrats all signed a petition Monday outside the Charlottesville Workforce Center that calls for the expansion of unemployment benefits. The event was part of the Democrats’ statewide “Stand Up for Virginia” tour to highlight the issue.