The state’s Emergency Commission has approved a plan to take $240,000 out of the state’s contingency fund to pay for some staff at Job Service North Dakota to stay on the job through January.
Job Service is federally funded. But the agency has seen federal funds cut back – while the number of unemployment claims has risen, at least partly due to the slowdown in the oil industry. And that means the agency will be reducing staff.
Over the past year, the agency has been seeing about 700 unemployment claims per month. But that’s expected to grow to 2500 in January.
"We're moving into the largest, busiest season with an extreme amount of backlog," said Job Service executive director Cheri Giesen. "The call wait times are long. The amount of time it takes to issue a check is getting longer. The amount of time it takes if you have a problem with your claim is getting longer. And we're just going to get further behind."
Giesen says this will keep the 207 employees on for an additional month. But she says after that, there will likely be staff cuts.
"We are looking at about 20 temporary staff to be cut, and then about a 10 percent reduction in full-time staff as well," Giesen told the Commission.
The vote was 3-2. Rep. Jeff Delzer (R-Underwood), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, opposed it.
"This is a federal office," said Delzer. "This is federal money. And for us to start this (using state money to supplant federal money) is going down the wrong path."
Gov. Jack Dalrymple chairs the Commission. He supports the transfer.
"Mitigating the impact on Job Service to the best of our ability is something that we should do," said Dalrymple. "By no means can we eliminate the problem. But we do have an opportunity to mitigate the problem to some extent. And I think that is an emergency."
Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner (R-Dickinson) also voted for it.
"I know that if we don't keep the services there, people are going to wonder why," said Wardner.
Secretary of State Al Jaeger voted in favor of the transfer as well. The other no vote came from Sen. Ray Holmberg (R-Grand Forks), the chairman of Senate Appropriations.
There's one more hurdle -- the final decision is up to the Legislature's Budget Section, which meets Dec. 15th.
