In the early months of 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo
consistently touted the progressive leadership of the Empire State in
championing the strongest paid family leave policy in the nation.
The new rules go into effect next January. Employees will be eligible for 12 weeks of
paid family leave when caring for an infant, a family member with a serious
health condition or to relieve family pressures when someone is called to
active military service.
Benefits will be phased-in, beginning at 50 percent
of an employee’s average weekly wage, capped to 50 percent of the statewide
average weekly wage. Once fully implemented in 2021, payments will hit 67
percent of their average weekly wage, capped to 67 percent of the statewide
average weekly wage.
This program will be funded entirely through a payroll
deduction on employees who will be eligible to participate after having worked
for their employer for six months.
That’s all we know about the program.
Despite being a leader in this endeavor, the state
is already behind: With less than a year to go to implementation, policymakers,
state agencies, employers and employees have been left in the dark about how
the program will be launched, administered, and funded.
It’s eerily similar to the cloak of darkness that
had county clerks across the state scrambling to figure out how to address the SAFE
Act’s handgun recertification issue after 3 years of zero guidance from the
Governors’ office. That was rectified by a surprise bombshell dropped at the
very last minute in which administration of the policy was granted to the State
Police.
This won’t be that easy.
While we know that the Workers Compensation Board (WCB)
will manage the paid leave program, every single employer in the state has much
to do in the next 11 months to get prepared and hold up their end of the
bargain. They have to learn state policies, make their own internal policies, update
employee handbooks, educate employees on the leave act and how to apply for it,
tell workers how much they are contributing to the state fund, and work with
payroll companies to appropriately earmark and disburse the insurance fees.
That’s a lot for businesses to learn and prepare (after
all, it is a stark culture change for most) amidst all the other things they do
on a day to day basis -- like running their companies and keeping people
employed.
When will they find out what’s expected? It
certainly won’t be anytime soon and it probably won’t be until after summer. By
then, it might be so late that you could easily imagine the state delaying the
launch of the program and/or being saddled with a lawsuit delaying it.
I lean towards a late-summer, early-fall info
campaign not out of pessimism but because the state truly appears to be making
little headway.
I attempted to navigate Cuomo’s 2017-2018 budget to
see if I could ascertain how much was projected to be collected and disbursed
over the first few months of the leave program. I found nothing. I also found
nothing on the WCB’s breakdown. What I did find in a budget narrative was an “out”
of sorts for the Governor – under “legislation required for the budget” there
was a line that requested the development of a Risk Adjustment Paid Family
leave Fund. So, while the previous budget (2016-2017) saw the announcement of
the birth of the paid leave program from a grandstanding standpoint, the
necessary legislation never accompanied it. Here we are a year later and the
plan is still lacking teeth and legality.
Somehow, in the next few months, the Legislature
has to work together (if that’s even possible) to allow the fund to even exist
at all. Then, the WCB, number crunchers, and others have to develop a sustainable
budget and determine what the insurance fee (tax) will be. Once that is settled
upon, only then can the policies be ironed out and delivered.
It’s a disappointing lack of true leadership by the
state. Having a vision is fine, but if there’s no strategy, no meat, to back up
the vision, it’s totally meaningless.
8 million private sectors workers will be eligible
for the program. They and their bosses need to know soon how it will all work –
something that state officials still don’t know, a full year into the
discussions.
From the 23 January 2017 Greater Niagara Newspapers
No comments:
Post a Comment