📋 Tender Overview
Governors special session call prompts legislative action on unemployment modernization after decade of inaction bill first to be passed by the Legislature under a special session call of Gov. EversGov. Tony Evers today signed January 2021 Special Session Senate Bill SB 1 now 2021 Wisconsin Act 4 which takes a step toward modernizing Wisconsins antiquated unemployment system after more than a decade of inaction. The bill comes after the governor announced he would be calling a Special Session of the Legislature to fix Wisconsins broken unemployment system during his 2021 State of the State address. While SB 1 does not include any funding or a commitment from the Legislature to fund the system upgrade to completion as was proposed by Gov. Evers the governor had previously called SB 1 a step in the right direction. This is the first bill to have been passed by the Legislature under a special session call of the governor. Gov. Evers signed SB 1 today and released a video message of the signing.The system isnt new and the problems arent either. We saw these problems brought to bear during the Great Recession. We saw it again during COVID-19. Gov. Evers said in the video message. At the end of the day this problem couldve been addressed by the previous administrations and more than a decades worth of state legislators who knew this system was outdated and couldnt handle an economic crisis like the one this pandemic created.Its unfortunate that the Legislature chose to cut the funding wed asked for to commit to upgrading our system from start to finishbecause I want to be clear this bill wont be enough to solve the problem. But after a decade of failing to act Im proud my special session could finally prompt the Legislature to do something on this issue. And Im proud this bill was passed with bipartisan support. So today were going to take the first step toward ensuring something like this never happens to the people of Wisconsin again.Wisconsins unemployment insurance system programming was developed in the early 1970s. Previous administrations and more than a decades worth of state legislators have known this system was outdated and couldnt handle the sort economic crisis that the state experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic and they failed to fix it. While a PolitiFact inquiry previously found legislative action and approval would be necessary to ensure ongoing funding for the project over multiple state budgets the Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate the governors proposed funding to initiate and make the first installment of payments on modernization choosing instead to require seeking additional legislative approval down the road for funds to be released. However the legislation passed does include waiving the one-week waiting period among other fixes to the unemployment systemmeasures the governor has repeatedly called on the Legislature to take up.
