State closer to accepting federal stimulus funds

CARSON CITY -- One of the measures needed to ensure Nevada gets nearly $300 million in federal stimulus funding to help jobless Nevadans was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Most of the money will be used to extend the period in which about 109,000 Nevadans already on the jobless rolls can get unemployment checks.

Another $77 million will provide benefits to as many as 6,000 more jobless Nevadans. Assembly Bill 469 makes statutory changes needed for Nevada to access that money.

Besides AB469, a pending resolution, ACR17, would affirm that the state will accept all federal funding available to help the jobless.

Lawmakers have said the state's unemployment trust fund, from which jobless benefits are paid out, could be wiped out by the end of this year without the stimulus funds. The benefit payment period now runs for up to 79 weeks.

By accepting the stimulus funds, the state will have to change its qualification rules for unemployment claims.

Gibbons had said earlier that such changes could lead to higher unemployment insurance taxes for Nevada businesses in the future.

Lawmakers have said that expanding the pool of qualified claimants without the federal stimulus money probably would require an increase in an unemployment tax rate paid by employers from 1.33 percent to 1.38 percent.

But legislators also said that with the federal stimulus money, the state can expand the claimant pool without raising the tax rate.

And then when the federal money runs out, the state laws expanding the benefits can be changed.