Connecticut’s businesses on Wednesday called on the General Assembly and Gov. Ned Lamont to use federal coronavirus relief funds to spare firms as much as $1 billion in unemployment taxes.
The Connecticut Business and Industry Association, which leads the coalition, also said the failure to follow this approach during the last recession was a critical error that still haunts the state.
“It certainly hurt our recovery” in 2008 and 2009, Chris DiPentima, president and CEO of the CBIA, said during a late-morning, live-streamed press conference.
And if Connecticut businesses remain responsible for repaying the $1 billion debt the state expects to face in its unemployment trust fund, he added, “It will once again threaten job recovery.”
Connecticut, like nearly all states, has run up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to maintain unemployment benefits since the pandemic began in early March of 2020.
The state Department of Labor has borrowed roughly $700 million from the federal unemployment trust to date, and the projections hold that Connecticut’s debt may exceed $1 billion before the majority of its population has been vaccinated.
The state was paying weekly benefits to more than 390,000 filers during the worst of the pandemic last spring, and the weekly caseload still tops 200,000. By comparison, Connecticut lost about 120,000 jobs during the last recession, which stretched from December 2007 through mid-2009.
To ease the burden on states, the federal government has waived interest charges on loans to support unemployment trusts.
Still, Connecticut fuels its unemployment trust with taxes on businesses, and business leaders said the state’s economy simply can’t recover if...
from News https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/CT-businesses-ask-state-to-pay-about-1-billion-16085693.php
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