State Rep. Jerry O'Connor gives testimony in favor of a bill that would require state agencies to report on various metrics for training and workforce development programs they supervise. (Screenshot/WisEye)

Republicans in the state Legislature are taking another run at changes to unemployment insurance and workforce programs in Wisconsin that Gov. Tony Evers vetoed in August 2023.

While sponsors of the bills cited a couple of modifications in some measures, they are for the most part unchanged, they said during public hearings Wednesday for four bills in the Assembly’s labor committee.

One, AB 162, would require state agencies to compile a series of metrics on training and workforce development programs under their supervision, including the unemployment rates and median earnings of participants six months after they graduate from a program.

“We want to make certain our money’s being spent in a way that generates a positive beneficial return both for taxpayers and for the individuals participating in the programs,” said state Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond du Lac), testifying in favor of the bill. “We’d look at the percent of individuals enrolled in training programs who obtained a measurable skill gain.”

O’Connor said the bill draws its performance measures from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), a federal workforce training law updated in 2014.

In vetoing the version of the bill that passed the last session of the Legislature, Evers said that many state programs it covered didn’t fit with WIOA’s reporting structure and “have separate requirements under current state law.”

Three other bills would impose tighter restrictions on the unemployment insurance (UI) system.

AB 167 would expand the definition of employee misconduct that would be grounds for denying an unemployment insurance claim as well as for a worker’s compensation claim. The bill would also require DWD to conduct random audits of 50% of all work searches reported by people claiming UI.

AB 168 would extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting felony fraudulent UI claims to eight years. It would also require the state Department of Workforce Development (DWD) to produce more training materials for employers and UI claimants, operate a call center and expand its hours in times of higher volume, check various state and national databases to verify that UI applicants qualify, and implement “identity-proofing” measures.

AB 169 would penalize UI recipients who do not show up for a job interview they have been granted or a job they’ve been offered — “commonly referred to as ghosting,” said state Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown), the bill’s author.

A UI recipient who fails to respond to an interview request or job offer, fails to report for a scheduled job interview or who is not available to return to work at their previous job would lose unemployment benefits for the week in which that occurred. The bill does not impose the penalty for the first offense.

State Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) asked Knodl whether the bill had gone through the state’s Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. The joint labor-management body revises the state’s UI law every two years. In the past Evers has vetoed UI proposals for not going through the council. 

“This is one of those that they’re not going to visit,” Knodl said. “So that’s why we’re here as a stand-alone bill.”

Nobody testified against the bills Wednesday, but Victor Forberger, a Madison attorney who represents people with UI claims, sent the committee a four-page memo opposing them. He wrote that DWD already does most of what AB 168 would require, and that it would “hamstring” the department “when new practices and resources emerge.”

The measures “will do nothing to make unemployment more useful and efficient for Wisconsin workers and employers,” Forberger wrote.