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State Representative Paul Anderson
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-4317
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GUEST COLUMN
Area small businesses concerned over law change
By Rep. Paul Anderson
A little-known provision of a bill (SF 2510) passed by the 2010 Legislature is causing concern among several area small businesses. What that portion of the bill did was extend the five-week benefit cap on unemployment insurance to adult children of business owners. This will hurt owners of seasonal small businesses who are affected by this change and make it more difficult for their children to work for them and eventually take over that business.
Let’s use a well-drilling company as an example or an excavation business that works from March or April through freeze-up in November. If the adult son or daughter of the owner works for the business, they will now be limited to only five weeks of unemployment benefits. That could make it difficult for that young person to work around here and live year-round. I voted against the bill because it seems to me that we are discouraging these young people from staying in the area and working into their family’s business. Collecting five weeks of benefits compared to three or four months could make a significant difference in their ability to work and live here.
The change was recommended by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council and the MN Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). Among the reasons given by the department is that, without this limit, an employer who is a business owner is in a position to choose start-up and layoff dates to provide maximum benefits to immediate family members. Their perspective is that these essentially wouldn’t be “arms length” employer-employee relationships. In addition, they say the change will reduce costs to both the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund and to other business owners.
When I asked for a clarification of the new law, it was pointed out that immediate family member employees can access federal unemployment insurance benefits once their five weeks of state benefits have been exhausted. If federal benefits are also used up, then they can access special state benefits, as well.
The law can be repealed, modified, or rewritten next session, but until or if that happens, the five-week benefit limit is the law of the state and applies to all adult children of business owners. It has prompted a number of phone calls and messages from those affected by the change, and I will look into making modifications in the law during the upcoming legislative session.
We certainly received that much-needed change in the weather that has allowed farmers to start gathering in their fall crops. In fact, this two-week stretch of beautiful fall conditions has allowed the harvest to progress so rapidly that many area elevators are full and can’t accept more grain until they start shipping out what’s already in storage. One manager told me that his group of elevators has taken in nearly 2 million bushels of soybeans in such a short time they are out of bin storage and are piling beans on the ground. Unloading into an auger outside takes longer than dumping inside, and I had to wait several hours to unload the last truckload that I hauled in. Thankfully, it was my last one, and now it’s on to corn harvest.
I did some quick math while watching the soybeans being piled. There were at least 100,000 bushels already on the ground and, at the current price of around $10 per bushel, that pile was worth a cool $1 million!
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