Green Bay Reporter

Wisconsin State Rep. Jim Steineke is promoting new legislation that will overhaul Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance program and criticized Gov. Tony Evers for not taking action sooner.

Steineke commended fellow State Reps. Warren Petryk (R-Town of Washington) and William Penterman (R-Columbus) and State Sen. Roger Roth (R-Appleton) for introducing the legislation that would overhaul Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance program, according to a news release.

"I applaud @RepWarrenPetryk @reppenterman and @SenatorRoth for showing what real leadership looks like when it comes to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance program," Steineke wrote in a Sept. 30 Twitter post.

Steineke also replied to his own tweet stating that, "@GovEvers has been two steps behind Wisconsin Republicans at every turn."

In his tweet, Steineke linked to a Wisconsin Public Radio article that reported an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found that of the over 41 million phone calls put in to Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development, only approximately 0.5% were answered.

After months of backlog of unemployment payments, Evers asked the head of the DWD to resign in Sept. 2020. At that point, over 700,000 claims made between March 15 and Sept. 12 had not yet been processed.

Wisconsin’s current unemployment rate is 3.9%, according to DWD.