Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan asked the U.S. Department of Labor Wednesday to reconsider its decision earlier this month, barring Vermont from going forward with an extra $25-a-week unemployment benefit.
In a letter to Jim Garner, administrator of the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Unemployment Insurance, Donovan argued that the Vermont Labor Department misinterpreted the Vermont law providing the benefit.
The whole argument around the extra $25 turns on whether it is considered a supplemental benefit or an increase in regular benefits.
The U.S. Department of Labor relied on the Vermont Labor Department’s interpretation that it’s a supplemental benefit, and ruled that Vermont’s Unemployment Trust Fund cannot be used to pay supplemental benefits.
The U.S. Labor Department told Vermont it could use the trust fund if it could incorporate the extra benefit into the calculation of regular unemployment benefits, but that calculation appears to be impossible, given the constraints of the 51-year-old programming language Vermont uses to calculate unemployment benefits.
Vermont Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington and other administration officials have argued that the computer system will not allow such a recalculation.
Some members of the Legislature have criticized Harrington for not letting them know back in June, before the Legislature adjourned, that the federal government could find the benefit illegal.
Three Democratic legislators asked for Harrington’s resignation over his delay in notifying the Legislature.
He offered an apology for the delay.
In his letter to Garner, Donovan argued that the benefit is not really a supplemental benefit at all, but rather an adjusted benefit, and so Vermont should be able to use Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund money to pay for it.
“[I]t is increasingly clear that the legislative intent of the law is essentially to provide a regular adjusted benefit to all qualified beneficiaries of the unemployment compensation program,” Donovan wrote.
Donovan wrote Garner that the U.S. Labor Department should follow the Legislature’s intent, and not the interpretation of the law by the Vermont Labor Department.
Harrington has said it is his department’s job to interpret the law. He has said his staff considered the language of the law, as well as hearings on the unemployment benefit last May, in concluding that the benefit is a supplemental benefit.
Donovan disagrees.
“The job of the executive is to faithfully execute the law,” Donovan wrote. “It is the job of the courts to interpret the law.”
Donovan argued in his letter that, because any unemployed Vermonter would receive the additional benefit, it should be considered a regular benefit.
“I urge the department to exercise its discretion and common sense and join Vermont in getting this benefit where it is intended to go as quickly as possible: to ordinary Vermonters suffering severe economic dislocation in the midst of an international pandemic,” Donovan wrote.
Donovan asked for a meeting with Garner and/or his reconsideration of the U.S. Labor Department’s decision.
“The bottom line is that Vermonters can’t afford to wait,” Donovan said in a press release. “This benefit was intended to go to all eligible Vermonters, and I hope and trust that our partners in the federal government will do everything in their power to act quickly and decisively to get this money into pockets and injected into our economy.”
Neither Donovan’s office, Harrington’s office, nor the U.S. Labor Department responded to requests for interviews.
