Month: February 2021

Yesterday, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) published a new Emergency Rule that will allow DWD to continue to waive work searches for people who apply for Unemployment Insurance benefits.

State law requires someone applying for unemployment benefits to look for a suitable job and provide information about four work search actions they have taken each week. This emergency rule allows DWD to respond to the spread of COVID-19 by waiving those work searches for thousands of people.

The Department recognizes that the work search requirement carries a significant burden on claimants when many businesses remain closed and job opportunities in certain sectors are still limited in response to the ongoing health and safety impacts of the global pandemic.

Under the plan, school districts that have offered and will continue to offer more hours of in-person instruction will receive a larger percentage of federal coronavirus aid than schools that have remained virtual. The measure was approved on a party-line vote of 11-4, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against, and will immediately go into effect.

Budget committee co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, both argued the GOP plan will send more money to districts that have “done the right thing” during the pandemic.

“I believe our kids need to be in school for their benefit and society’s benefit,” Marklein said.  Marklein also argued districts that have provided in-person instruction over the last several months have incurred costs for things like transportation and cleaning supplies that districts exclusively offering virtual instruction have not.

Republicans on the committee pointed to statistics about rising suicide rates and mental health crises among students during the pandemic, as well as spikes in substance abuse and domestic violence. Democrats on the committee argued it is inappropriate to financially penalize schools that have chosen to offer exclusively virtual instruction during the pandemic.

“Districts that were doing the right thing were actually listening to those in the medical community and the scientists who said, ‘Close your doors, don’t be open,'” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-West Point.

Wisconsin will receive about $686 million from the federal government for K-12 schools under Congress’ coronavirus response bill passed last year. Under the federal bill, about 90 percent of those funds will be distributed based on the number of low-income students in each school district, without input from state administrations or lawmakers.

However, Congress gave states discretion over how to spend the remaining 10 percent of the funds, roughly $69 million in Wisconsin.

A one-week waiting period is back in effect for Wisconsinites applying for unemployment, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to lead to job losses.

The waiting period went back into effect Sunday after Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican COVID-19 response bill last week. Republicans added the waiver of the one-week waiting period in an attempt to get the governor to sign a bill that included several COVID measures he disagreed with.

Republicans passed a law requiring unemployed people to wait a week before they could claim benefits a decade ago as a way to bolster the state’s unemployment fund. Lawmakers suspended the rule during the early months of the pandemic last year, but that action expired Sunday. Evers has previously called for permanently repealing the waiting period.

Gov. Tony Evers’ next two-year budget will include a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana as part of plan to generate more than $165 million each year for rural schools and underserved communities.

The proposal to tax and regulate marijuana similar to alcohol sales is likely to be shot down by the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has opposed efforts to legalize marijuana in the past. Thirty-six states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana and 15 states are regulating recreational use of marijuana, including neighboring states Michigan and Illinois.

Some Republican lawmakers have supported legislation to legalize medical marijuana in recent years, including now Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and Sen. Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls.

Bernier said Sunday that she’s open to legalizing medical marijuana and decriminalizing small amounts of the drug, noting it may have potential to help people break their addiction to drugs like methamphetamine or heroin. She said she’s willing to work with Evers, but also indicated his past efforts to decriminalize marijuana were a thinly veiled effort to legalize recreational weed.

Bernier called the governor’s proposal “divisive.”

“The bottom line is, he knows, I know, we know that the Republican Legislature is not going to legalize marijuana, per se,” said Bernier. “So, let’s talk about the things we can do, and work together.”

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers issued a new statewide mask order on Thursday, an hour after the Republican-controlled Legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate saying he didn’t have authority to make such a decree.

If the Legislature keeps playing politics and we don’t keep wearing masks, we’re going to see more preventable deaths, and it’s going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track,” Evers said.

On January 19, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a bulletin allowing states to permit insurers to renew transitional policies as long as such policies come into compliance with certain specified market reforms by January 1, 2023. Specifically, the new guidance on transitional plans extends the use of transitional plans through December 31, 2022. In light of this new federal guidance, the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) is issuing this bulletin to allow for the extension of these plans as outlined by CMS.

There is a potential that in the 2022 plan year insurers will again face an issue of policies that end prior to December 31, 2022, or if renewed in 2022 will extend beyond December 31, 2022. CMS’s guidance states that policies must be fully ACA compliant by January 1, 2023. To achieve this, CMS and OCI will allow a policy to renew with a term that is less than 12-months or will allow an option to renew policies early in order to facilitate transition to fully ACA-compliant policies starting January 1, 2023. For policies that end prior to December 31, 2022, insurers may renew policies with a shorter term in order to avoid a gap in coverage prior to the 2023 plan year.

As part of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I, the FCC auctioned off $9.2 billion over 10 years to provide broadband access across the United States.

You can see areas included in phase 1 on this map.

A number of bids for North Central Wisconsin went to Charter (Spectrum) and LTD Broadband.

Brittany Beyer, chair of the state’s broadband access task force, explained communities would benefit from acting now to prepare for service providers.

Beyer said, “if there are any roadblocks, there’s potential that Charter and LTD will be like ‘okay, we’ll put you to the back of the list because you’re hard to deal with.'”

Phase 1 and 2 of RDOF could take over ten years to complete. If you are a community leader looking for more details, you can reach out to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

Last Friday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued stronger worker safety guidance to help employers and workers implement a coronavirus prevention program and better identify risks which could lead to exposure and contraction.

“Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace” provides updated guidance and recommendations, and outlines existing safety and health standards. OSHA is providing the recommendations to assist employers in providing a safe and healthful workplace.

The guidance details key measures for limiting coronavirus’s spread, including ensuring infected or potentially infected people are not in the workplace, implementing and following physical distancing protocols and using surgical masks or cloth face coverings. It also provides guidance on use of personal protective equipment, improving ventilation, good hygiene and routine cleaning.

This guidance is not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations. It contains recommendations as well as descriptions of existing mandatory safety and health standards. The recommendations are advisory in nature, informational in content and are intended to assist employers in recognizing and abating hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm as part of their obligation to provide a safe and healthful workplace.

On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) posted updated FAQs about recent legislation that extended and amended tax relief to certain small- and mid-sized employers under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).

The FAQs are available at COVID-19-Related Tax Credits for Required Paid Leave Provided by Small and Midsize Businesses FAQs.

The updates to the FAQs cover how the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020, enacted December 27, 2020, extends the availability of the tax credits created by the FFCRA to eligible employers for paid sick and family leave provided through March 31, 2021, as well as other amendments to the credits.

The paid sick and family leave credits, which previously were available only until the end of 2020, have been extended for periods of leave taken through March 31, 2021.

In addition, an eligible employer can receive the paid sick leave credit for employees who are unable to work due to caring for someone with coronavirus or caring for a child because the child’s school or place of care is closed, or the paid childcare provider is unavailable due to the coronavirus. Eligible employers may claim the credit for paid sick leave provided to an employee for up to two weeks (up to 80 hours) at 2/3 the employee’s regular rate of pay, or up to $200 per day and $2,000 in total.

Employers are also entitled to a paid family leave credit for paid family leave provided to an employee equal to 2/3 of the employee’s regular pay, up to $200 per day and $10,000 in total. Up to 10 weeks of qualifying leave can be counted towards the family leave credit.

Eligible employers are entitled to immediately receive a credit in the full amount of the paid sick leave and family leave plus related health plan expenses and the employer’s share of Medicare tax on the leave provided through March 31, 2021. The refundable credit is applied against certain employment taxes on wages paid to all employees.

Eligible employers may claim the credits on their federal employment tax returns (e.g., Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return), but they can benefit more quickly from the credits by reducing their federal employment tax deposits. If there are insufficient federal employment taxes to cover the amount of the credits, an eligible employer may request an advance payment of the credits from the IRS by submitting a Form 7200, Advance Payment of Employer Credits Due to COVID-19.