State Rep. Brian BeGole today opposed a plan that will harm small businesses throughout Michigan and test an already shaky ability to handle fraud at the state level.

House Bill 5827 would increase the maximum number of weeks that an individual may receive unemployment compensation from 20 to 26 weeks beginning on Jan. 1, 2025.

“There’s no unemployment crisis in Michigan for this bill to address. Our rate is currently below the national average,” said BeGole of Antrim Township. “This plan will create problems for tens of thousands of local job providers who have to pay into this system and have already been put through the wringer by burdensome regulation and inflation. I don’t see the need for a bill that is going to create more problems that it will solve.”

The current 20-week limit was implemented in 2011 due to problems the state’s Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) was facing at the time, which included debt and high costs. In addition, UIA experienced numerous issues with fraud and its fraud prevention tools during the COVID-19 pandemic when hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents saw their livelihoods shuttered.

A state audit released in December showed that UIA did not do enough to identify and investigate potential fraud as unemployment claims came in and instead paid out over $245 million to ineligible claimants – including dead people – between Jan. 2020 and Oct. 2022. A separate audit from Deloitte estimated that from March 2020 through Sept. 2021, missteps from UIA cost the state an estimated $8.5 billion.

“These reviews clearly showed UIA was not effective in administering benefits and their errors cost job providers, people who needed benefits in a timely fashion, and the state,” BeGole said. “Now just a couple years removed from these failures, we’re going to heap additional responsibility back onto the agency. This is a misguided plan.”

HB 5827 advanced to the Senate for further consideration after being approved by the House along party lines.