BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
2055 (De La Torre)
Hearing Date: 8/2/2010 Amended: 4/13/2010
Consultant: Bob Franzoia Policy Vote: L&IR 4-1
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 2055 would clarify provisions governing
eligibility for benefits and employer's reserve accounts, in
order that "domestic partner" also includes a person to whom
domestic partnership is imminent. Because the bill would
provide for additional amounts payable for unemployment
insurance (UI) benefits from the Unemployment Fund, a
continuously fund, the bill would make an appropriation.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
Domestic partner eligibility Minor, absorbable costs
annually Special*
for UI benefits
* Unemployment Fund
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STAFF COMMENTS: Current law provides that a person may be
deemed to have left his or her most recent work with good cause
if he or she left the employer's employ to accompany his or her
spouse or domestic partner to a place from which it is
impractical to commute to the employment and specifies that
"spouse" includes a person to whom marriage is imminent.
Current law also provides that if a person left the employer's
employ under certain circumstances, including, among others, if
he or she left employment to accompany his or her spouse or
domestic partner to a place from which it is impractical to
commute to the employment, the UI benefits paid to the person
are not charged to the employer's reserve account. Thus, if an
employer has an employee who qualifies for this UI benefit, the
employer's UI tax rate does not change to account for the cost
of the increased UI benefit payment. Instead, the good cause
costs are spread amongst all employers.
Under this bill, a person may receive up to 26 weeks of UI
benefits, the same amount any person determined eligible for UI
could potentially collect. "Imminent" is determined when EDD is
determining eligibility for benefits. Under this bill (and in
current law when marriage is imminent), an individual who quits
his or her job to relocate with a significant other and the two
people are in the process of becoming registered domestic
partners (imminent), that individual may be eligible for UI
benefits provided all other requirements, including
demonstrating all reasonable attempts to preserve the employment
relationship are met.
Expanding UI eligibility to include persons who are in the
process of becoming registered domestic partners would likely
affect a very small group and have a minimal impact to the
Unemployment Fund. Approximately 0.78 percent of all UI benefit
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AB 2055 (De La Torre)
eligibility issues adjudicated involve a person who quit due to
domestic reasons, which includes quitting work to attend to an
ill family member, a lack of child care, a spousal move, etc.
This bill would only impact a sub-set of the 0.78 percent of all
eligibility issues involving a quit for domestic reasons, so the
potential number of persons who would benefit from this bill
likely would be very few.
California Code of Regulation Title 22, Section 1256-12
provides:
In some cases a claimant may quit well in advance of the
intended marriage. In such cases, good cause will be dependent
upon why the claimant quit at the time. As to how many days
prior to the marriage a claimant may quit and still have good
cause, no arbitrary rule can be established. Rather, this is
dependent upon the nature and extent of advance preparations
that were to be made, and whether or not these arrangements
could have been accomplished without leaving work that soon.
Occasionally, the marriage is delayed due to circumstances
beyond the claimant's control. As long as the marriage was
imminent at the time of the quit and the claimant could not have
foreseen the delay, good cause will still exist.
As of March 30, 2010, the California Secretary of State reported
that there were 57,286 registered domestic partners. However,
eligibility created by imminent domestic partnership should
occur infrequently since the time to process a domestic
partnership registration is only five to ten days.
UI tax rates are assigned to employers based on "experience
rating." Essentially, the more layoffs and benefits paid to
former employees, the higher the tax rate for the employer.
This is meant to encourage employers to maintain a stable
workforce with fewer layoffs. However, socialized costs are
also included when calculating an employer's UI tax rate and
therefore have the potential to increase an employer's tax rate
although the charges are unrelated to the individual employer's
use of the UI system.
Currently, the average UI benefit is $304 per week. If an
average benefit was paid for one week, more than 493 persons
would need to avail themselves of this benefit annually to incur
costs of more than $150,000.