![Elizabeth Hovde of the Washington Policy Center expresses hope that the Employment Security Department has the ability to make this process make better sense.](https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/large_Clark-County-Today-Opinion-Rulemaking-in-process-for-workers-‘exempted-from-long-term-care-payroll-tax.jpg)
Elizabeth Hovde of the Washington Policy Center expresses hope that the Employment Security Department has the ability to make this process make better sense
Elizabeth Hovde
Washington Policy Center
Throw out your understanding of the word “exempt” and shush the Merriam-Webster Dictionary when it comes to the state’s long-term-care law and WA Cares Fund.
![Elizabeth Hovde](https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Clark-County-Today-HovdeMug-1.jpg)
The Legislature saw fit to pass a bill in January that implies that some of the people who can never expect to receive long-term-care funding from the WA Cares Fund, a state-mandated social program, should be exempt from a payroll tax for the program that begins in July 2023. But lawmakers also saw fit to write that exemption language cumbersome and problematic, making the bill’s intention questionable.
See what lawmakers did here: Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1733 proclaims, “Beginning January 1, 2023, the employment security department shall accept and approve applications for voluntary exemptions from the premium assessment under RCW 50B.04.080 for any employee who meets criteria established by the employment security department ….” Workers who might be “voluntarily” exempted, not simply exempt, include those who live out of state, military spouses, veterans with a 70% or higher service-connected disability and workers on non-immigrant visas.
I fear agricultural workers, in particular, will slip through the cracks of the sorta, kinda exemption that lawmakers carved out.
Agriculture-rich Washington state has around 29,000 H-2A workers. I’m concerned these workers will need to apply for an exemption from a tax they won’t fully know about in a timeframe that is unrealistic — with language barriers that might get in the way.
I hope the Employment Security Department has the ability to make this process make better sense. Today at a rulemaking hearing discussing how this is going to work, I commented that for an exemption to be a true exemption, as I hope the Legislature intended, workers included in ESHB 1733 should receive an automatic exemption, not one they have to apply for. These workers should not have barriers to the exemption that lawmakers said they carved out.
Repealing the long-term-care law, of course, as lawmakers should do next January, would take care of this and many other problems in the law.
Elizabeth Hovde is a policy analyst and the director of the Centers for Health Care and Worker Rights at the Washington Policy Center. She is a Clark County resident.
Also read:
- Letter: For the public record and the Comprehensive PlanIn a July 12 letter to the Clark County Council, Clark County Citizens United President Susan Rasmussen shares that primary stakeholders were ignored in the Wetland and Habitat Ordinance Conservation Covenant.
- Opinion: Supreme Court gives Vancouver a new tool to use in its homelessness efforts, but will the city use it?Most Vancouver residents do not want homelessness to be criminalized but they do want a response when some in the homeless community commit crimes, and a new ruling by the United States Supreme court is a tool the city could use to help neighborhoods.
- Opinion: Has transit entered the “death spiral?”Transit ridership dropped sharply with the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The slow rebound in the years that followed has prompted discussion, sometimes in hushed tones, as to whether transit had entered a “death spiral.”
- POLL: Should the city of Vancouver do more to protect citizens who have been victims of harassment, or worse, from those living homeless on the streets?Should the city of Vancouver do more to protect citizens who have been victims of harassment, or worse, from those living homeless on the streets?
- Opinion: How bad is freeway speeding?Target Zero Manager Doug Dahl answers a question about the commonplace of freeway speeding in Washington state.