Louisiana Won’t Cut Jobless Benefits

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers have agreed to keep the rules governing the state’s unemployment trust fund static. That will avoid the increase in business taxes and the drop in jobless benefits that would have otherwise been triggered by the draining of the trust fund. The state’s unemployment fund is nearly bankrupt after payments to workers forced out of their jobs by the coronavirus pandemic. Louisiana has borrowed federal money to pay for unemployment benefits. To refill the fund, state law requires tax hikes on businesses and a decline in benefits for jobless workers who receive some of the lowest unemployment payments in the nation. Lawmakers have delayed those triggers for another year.