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In this year's legislative session, Maryland's unemployment insurance trust fund emerged as a major issue for businesses, with many employers upset over a large hike in taxes for the fund.

The issue remains such a concern that the Maryland Chamber of Commerce is including it as one of the breakout sessions in next week's annual Business Policy Conference.

The minimum rate employers are paying this year is $187 per employee, up from $51 last year. The maximum is $1,148 per employee, a jump from $765.

The rates are determined by the total amount of taxable wages earned in the state, the balance of the state's unemployment insurance trust fund on Sept. 30 and how many employees a business has laid off. The fund balance on Sept. 30 was about the same as a year earlier, about $300 million. The balance in September 2008 was about $900 million.

For 2009, employers paid at Table B, which carried a minimum rate of 0.6 percent for companies that didn't have many former employees collecting jobless benefits. The maximum rate was 9.0 percent for businesses that laid off a considerable number of workers. This year, employers jumped up to the highest, Table F, which has rates from 2.2 percent to 13.5 percent, because of the smaller balance in the trust fund.

And because that balance was about the same last month as a year ago, employers in 2011 will not move to a table with lower rates, said Ronald L. Adler, CEO of Potomac human resources consulting firm Laurdan Associates. Adler is the Maryland chamber's representative on the state Joint Committee on Unemployment Insurance Oversight, which is due to issue a report to state legislators in December.

Many employers' unemployment insurance payments likely will rise next year because they have laid off more people during the recession, he said.

"That could bump them up to a higher rate within Table F," said Adler, who will moderate the chamber's session on unemployment insurance on Oct. 29.

In 2009, Maryland paid $1.07 billion in unemployment benefits to laid-off workers, up 69 percent from $633.5 million in 2008, according to U.S. Department of Labor figures. With Maryland's unemployment rate dipping this year from 7.5 percent in January to 7.3 percent in August, the total of benefits paid has fallen in the first nine months this year by 16 percent to $702.4 million from the same period in 2009.

The session at next week's conference should help educate business representatives on how to strengthen internal company policies so their unemployment insurance rates can go down, said Kathleen T. Snyder, president and CEO of the Maryland chamber.

"Employees sometimes file for unemployment benefits after being fired or voluntarily quitting," Snyder said. "There are steps employers can take if they think a former employee has filed an unfair claim. There is an appeals process. A lot of businesspeople aren't aware of that provision."

Besides Adler, scheduled panelists are Julie Ellen Squire, assistant secretary of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation's Division of Unemployment Insurance; Judy Smylie, director and chief hearing examiner of the state labor department's Lower Appeals Division; state Sen. Thomas McLain Middleton (D-Dist. 28) of Waldorf, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Unemployment Insurance Oversight; and Kara Miller, principal at law firm Franklin & Prokopik, which has offices in Baltimore, Easton and Hagerstown.

A compromise worked out by business, labor and political leaders in the spring eliminates sick claims filed by unemployed workers and increases the minimum weekly benefit threshold that claimants can collect to $50 from $25, meaning fewer workers can collect. The plan also boosts penalties for workers fired for misconduct and lowers wages that claimants can earn while getting jobless benefits without reducing benefits to $50 from $100.

But officials also agreed to extend benefits to more workers, such as those in approved job training programs, and adopt a new method of calculating claimants' eligibility for benefits that is likely to cost the state and employers more.

The compromise law allowed the state to qualify for $126.8 million in federal stimulus funds to help shore up the trust fund.

The state plans to notify employers of their unemployment insurance tax rate for next year in December.

kshay@gazette.net