Economic Opportunity

In Chapter 374, which the Governor vetoed, the 1998 Legislature appropriated over $9 million for workforce training and economic opportunity programs. In the special session, the Legislature responded by passing just over $2.3 million for these programs. These appropriations included:

• $1 million to the Department of Economic Security to fund its Vocational Rehabilitation Program;

• $1 million for summer youth employment programs;

• $126,000 to Advocating Change Together, Inc., for training and empowering individuals with developmental and other mental health disabilities; and

• $200,000 for displaced homemaker em-powerment programs.

Workers' Compensation

Chapter 339 made several technical changes for employers who self-insure or who have self-insured for workers' compensation. These changes included provisions that:

• Require employers that no longer are self-insured to withdraw from the self-insurers security fund by making a lump sum payment sufficient to cover 120 percent of the employers' estimated liabilities, as determined by an actuary, multiplied by the higher of two ways of estimating the future annual assessment rate;

• Permit commercial self-insurance groups to invest their assets in a broader range of investments than is presently permitted; and

• Allow commercial self-insurance groups in existence for five years the same funding requirement permitted for the older type of self-insurance groups.

Reemployment Insurance

The 1998 Legislature enacted legislation providing that reemployment insurance benefit overpayments that are the result of administrative or employer mistakes are exempt from the requirement that most debts of the state be turned over to the Minnesota collections enterprise when they are 120 days past due.

In addition, the Legislature also passed legislation changing maximum benefit amounts, penalties, procedures, and other provisions of the reemployment insurance statutes. Among the changes, the legislation: (1) provides for two methods of computing the weekly benefit amount, depending on whether the employee's pay is evenly distributed over the year; (2) provides a maximum experience rating and eliminates the maximum tax rate; (3) changes the circumstances in which an experience rating is transferred when a business is sold; (4) makes those working more than 32 hours per week ineligible, rather than those working full-time; (5) changes the penalties available when a claimant fraudulently causes overpayment of benefits; and (6) provides an administrative penalty when an employer provides false information to avoid payment of benefits to a claimant or to avoid having the benefits charged to the employer's account.

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