O n Tuesday, Gov. Pat McCrory vetoed an unemployment insurance bill that sorely needed to be vetoed, exercising that power granted to him by the North Carolina Constitution for only the third time.
But unfortunately for the struggling unemployed of North Carolina, McCrory did not use his power out of concern for the nightmarish bureaucratic burdens placed on the unemployed, but because of a trivial political squabble.
The bill is likely to pass in one form or another soon. McCrory’s previous two vetoes were both overridden.
McCrory vetoed the bill because it would limit his control over the Board of Review, a three-member board that rules on appeals of unemployment board decisions. Currently, McCrory has sole authority over the appointment of the board’s members, who are paid $120,000 per year.
The new bill, if passed into law, would give one appointment each to the leaders of the North Carolina House, the North Carolina Senate and the governor. It also would shorten the terms of the three current members of the board.
All of this was apparently done in order to retaliate to the governor for submitting his appointments for the board late. Ultimately, all of these details probably don’t matter much to North Carolina’s 300,000 unemployed.
But it may interest them to know that the bill, if passed, would require unemployed people to contact five potential employers a week about potential work in order to be qualified as “actively seeking work,” an increase from the two contacts currently required for unemployed individuals.
This policy change could serve to artificially lower official unemployment numbers by categorizing people that fail to meet this ridiculous quota as not “actively seeking work,” and could further hurt those people by making it more difficult to qualify for unemployment insurance.
McCrory referred to these changes in unemployment laws and others as “much needed,” according to The (Raleigh) News & Observer.
