Legislators Oppose Using Comp Money to Fund Paid Family Leave Act

Tuesday, June 7, 2016 | 0

Oneida County legislators are opposing New York’s decision to use $10 million from the state’s workers’ compensation fund as seed money to implement the recently passed Paid Family Leave Act.

George E. Joseph

While officials with the state Department of Budgets say the move will not affect employers’ rates, Oneida officials are objecting because the family leave law was supposed to be paid for through a nominal payroll deduction from employees, the Observer-Dispatch reported Sunday.

“What bothers me is it was sold on the promise of being self-funded, and then we find out that they are taking out this money to pay for it,” Oneida Majority Leader George E. Joseph told the newspaper. “It's just more of the state saying one thing and doing another.”

On April 4, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Paid Family Leave Act, which grants 12 weeks of paid leave to family members caring for newborns or close relatives with serious health conditions. He called it the “strongest paid family leave policy in the nation.”

Benefits will be phased in starting in 2018 and will be capped at 50 percent of an employee’s average weekly wage; by 2021, the cap would rise to 67 percent.

Morris Peters, spokesman for the state Department of Budgets, told the Observer-Dispatch that the $10 million was amassed over decades from insurers that overcharged for workers’ compensation and that the money cannot be used to pay claims because its origins would be virtually impossible to trace.