Pamela Prah reports Kentucky is among a group of states with underfunded unemployment insurance trust funds.
"States that are also well below the recommended level with only about six months of money in their reserves are: Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin."
Given Kentucky's troublesome tendency to import poverty-stricken residents from other states, what might be even more disconcerting is that neighbors to the north Michigan and Ohio (and to the west, Missouri) are even closer to insolvency in their unemployment trust funds than we are. Should they decide to scale back on this or other entitlements to weather the storm, Kentucky may be forced to act.
Of course we did have a couple of bills in the last General Assembly (HB 190 and HB 221) that could have started us in that direction.
