Lost unemployment benefits restored
State lawmakers returned to Columbia Tuesday for a special session to extend extended unemployment benefits.
The vote to return the benefits was approved by a third vote late Wednesday afternoon, said Rep. Vida Miller, D-Pawleys Island.
It was approved by the House, with no opposition, late Wednesday and now must be signed by the governor.
Push to reconvene
Miller had pushed to get the General Assembly to reconvene, and not accept any pay for the special session.
About 7,000 people in the state could have lost up to 20 weeks of extended unemployment payments, due to an oversight in changing the way South Carolina qualifies for the benefits.
State lawmakers should have tied the benefits to the state's total jobless rate.
Instead, the benefits were tied to the number of people getting jobless checks, which has fallen recently, causing the extended benefits to end, according to Miller and others in the General Assembly who were angry about the problem.
Miller said earlier she was "stunned and outraged by the lack of communications from state leadership regarding the changes that need to be made in our state law" to correct the problem so that the unemployment benefits continue.
She said this week that it is great that the benefits were restored.
"100 percent of the House voted for it,'' she said.
Local Impact
There are thousands in Georgetown County out of work who are being affected by the benefit cutoff.
More than 3,000 people in Georgetown County are now unemployed, according to the state office of the ESC.
The current unemployment rate in Georgetown County is now 12.5 percent.
Many of the people laid off from the Georgetown steel mill are still on regular benefits, but others have been laid off since 2008, said ESC Director Brenda England.
Steel mill officials said this week the mill is likely to stay closed until 2011.
Some residents of Georgetown County have already extended all of the benefit programs that are available to them, Powell said.
: 10/30/2009
THANK GOD THAT THESE PEOPLE WILL BE GETTING THEIR BENEFITS RESTORED. SOME PEOPLE ONLY HAVE THAT TO DEPEND ON UNTIL THEY CAN GET A JOB. IT'S NOT MUCH BUT IT WILL HELP IN THESE HARD TIMES.