By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The Kansas House approved legislation Wednesday altering the Kansas unemployment insurance system by ending the practice of annually writing off employers’ unpaid obligations to the state trust fund.
Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican and chairman of the House commerce committee, said the state enacted a law in 2024 that led to annual forgiveness of debt owed by employers making extensive use of the trust fund. The idea was to even the ledger for negative-balance employers so the state made it easier on businesses to implement new unemployment insurance contribution rates, he said.
“We are reversing that,” Tarwater said. “We’re not going to forgive it every year.”
The House bill, sent to the Kansas Senate on a vote of 85-36, would retain laws providing Kansans laid off due to no fault of their own a maximum 16 weeks of financial support each benefit year. In Kansas, out-of-work individuals qualify for up to eight weeks of financial support. The Kansas Department of Labor has authority to approve an extra eight weeks of benefits provided the jobless worker actively sought a job.
Tarwater said Senate Bill 229 would outline how the Department of Labor dealt with employee-sponsored supplemental unemployment benefit plans. SUB plans haven’t been common in Kansas, but exist among large-scale manufacturers.
In 2025, General Motors workers covered by a supplemental plan were laid off for retooling of the Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas. They experienced confusion about whether they were required to apply for jobs to continue receiving state jobless benefits even though their status as GM employees assured they’d be called back to work.
“This fixes that without changing how they’re paid,” Tarwater said.
Another section required one-year provisos related to the state’s unemployment system to pass through the House and Senate commerce committees. In addition, each proviso would prompt a report to the Legislature on how that modification influenced the unemployment trust fund.
During initial months of the 2026 legislative session, labor organizations and a coalition of businesses struggled to find compromise on the unemployment bill.
Jake Miller, executive director of the Working Kansas Alliance, said the original package introduced as House Bill 2764 didn’t reflect “extensive, good-faith” negotiations with the business coalition that “led to a carefully crafted compromise” on change to the state’s unemployment insurance program.
“Instead,” he said, “it contains numerous provisions that deviate from the agreed-upon framework.”
Phil Hayes, who represented the coalition of businesses in negotiations on unemployment reform, said the draft of HB 2764 offered stability to the state’s trust fund and conformity with federal mandates.
“Unemployment insurance is extremely technical,” he said. “There’s a lot of gears that turn and they have to turn together. There’s a lot of scrutiny from the feds. It’s not just a matter of tweaking one thing.”
