Unemployment rates increased in 85 percent of counties in Wisconsin between January and February, according to a state department statement Wednesday.

The Department of Workforce Development released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noting unemployment rates also spiked in 10 of 12 of the state’s largest metropolitan areas, with no rate change in Eau Claire and La Crosse over the same time period. Twenty of 32 major municipalities also experienced influxes, the statement said.

These rates are based on unemployment insurance claims and monthly surveys of 1,450 households statewide, according to the statement.

Twenty-seven Republican legislators signed on to a letter advocating for more than 30 reforms to scale back the state’s unemployment benefits. They submitted the letter to the DWD’s Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council Monday for review. 

The council will meet April 18 and provide feedback regarding these recommendations May 2.

Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, one of the main authors of the package of unemployment benefit changes, said the proposal’s purpose is to return financial stability to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance fund, which is currently in debt. 

He said the state was forced to borrow about one-and-a-half billion federal dollars during the recession, and must now pay that back.

“The motivation is to bring the funds back in a fisically solvent way, so the funds are beginning to grow again and are available for the next recessionary time that we have for unemployment needs,” Knodl said. “[The funds are] there for people who lose jobs through no fault of their own.”

Three specific provisions of the unemployment benefit reform measure are linking benefits to Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, using taxpayer funds to scale back the federal debt at the expense of continuing payments to newly hired employees during traiing.

Another goal is to clean up the current wasteful fraud and abuse of the unemployment system, while simultaneously saving up to $60 million per year, according to Knodl, who is chairman of the Assembly’s Committee or Labor.

So far, the department has yet to comment on the package of proposed changes. DWD Executive Assistant Georgia Maxwell said she encourages lawmakers to partner with the council to make unemployment policy changes.

“We are pleased that this week 27 lawmakers chose to do just that by sending a letter to the UIAC chair requesting feedback on a plethora of important reforms that would ease the burden on small businesses,” Maxwell said, adding she encourages UIAC members to earnestly review the reforms and respond with valuable input.

Eric Peterson, spokesperson for Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, said the senator will wait for the UIAC’s feedback on the letter before taking a stance. However, he noted the changes do not look reassuring.

Unemployment insurance has historically provided a safety net to maintain consumer spending and ensure people without jobs can buy food or stay on track with payments, Peterson said, but the debt reducing proposals would dehibilitate such market facilitation.

“These changes come from a partisan nature and they really represent austerity being shoved into the field of unemployment,” Peterson said. “To implement austerity into that is one more further hit on the economic recovery of Wisconsin.”

Peterson added implementing the unemployment policy reforms would exacerbate the state’s job creation efforts the same way consumer spending depleted when union workers had their bargaining rights cut. 

The differerence is these changes would affect people who cannot get jobs because the state has not done enough to create them, he said.

Peterson acknowledged Knodl’s argument said there are mooches in the system who continue to receive money after losing their jobs because of their own fault and a review is necessary. Yet, Peterson said this is not reason to gut a program critical to the state’s economy.

“There’s no doubt the first time anything costs money in government, fraud is always brought up by those folks who want to find a reason to cut something,” he said. “Wisconsin generally errs, if we err in any way, on the side of the person who is unemployed to make sure the economy does not become burdened by people who have no possible income and aren’t able to feed their children.”