Whither the District’s Adult Job Training Money?

If you have been following the work of the DC Jobs Council for the past few years, you may remember all of our hard work to get local funds for adult job training in the District’s budget. Thanks in large part to Councilmembers Marion Barry (who got $4.6 million in the FY2010 Budget Support Act of 2009) and Michael Brown (who saved the FY2010 money, and got $4.6 million more in the FY2011 budget), the District made a commitment to fund job training for adults facing barriers to employment, and to disburse those funds via an RFP process.

The DCJC has been following up – relentlessly, some would say – with elected officials and staff in both the executive and legislative branches of the District government to ensure these local funds were spent effectively. After much effort, we can report on what has happened to the local funds budgeted for job training for DC adults.

First, none of the money budgeted in FY2010 for adult training was actually spent in FY2010. The DC Council made the funds nonlapsing, so they rolled over for use for the same purpose in FY2011. That gave us approximately $9.2 million in local funds for adult job training to use in FY2011.

According to the DC Department of Employment Services and the office of the District’s Chief Financial Officer, the money was spent as follows:

Reprogrammed by then-outgoing-Mayor Adrian Fenty to cover severance pay for departing senior-level staff	$500,000
To The Excel Institute, as directed by a mayoral earmark in the FY2011 Budget Request Act	$600,000
To Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School to support training programs in culinary arts, nursing, and information technology	$2,200,000
To replace funds designated to support DOES’ Transitional Employment Program (Project Empowerment)	$3,500,000
Other expenses	$300,000

For those of you keeping score, that totals $8.1 million, leaving $1.1 million for FY2011. Some of that $1.1 million is being held to ensure DOES is able to fund all of the Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) to which it has committed. Any funds unspent by the end of FY2011 will roll over to FY2012.

A bit more explanation of some of the expenditures may be helpful.

Then-Mayor Fenty earmarked $600,000 for The Excel Institute in the FY2011 Budget Request Act of 2010. The funds were to be used to support Excel’s automotive service training program. And in the Budget Support Act for the same year, $2.2 million in local funds were directed toward a DC nonprofit that (1) offered training programs in culinary arts, nursing, and information technology; (2) could serve 300 clients immediately; and (3) could demonstrate a placement rate of at least 90 percent. Carlos Rosario is the only nonprofit in the District that met all of the criteria.

We should note at this point that The Excel Institute and Carlos Rosario are excellent organizations that provide high-quality programs and services to their clients. Our concern is not with the fact that these entities received funding, but rather that the RFP process laid out in the authorizing legislation was not followed.

The need for DOES to transfer funds between agency line items to support the Transitional Employment Program is a bit more troubling. For some time, the District has been using excess monies from the Workers’ Compensation Trust Fund to support TEP. Recently, it came to light that such a practice might be impermissible. Until the question is resolved, the District cannot use the excess dollars in the Trust Fund. To keep the TEP functioning, the city had to find another source of funds. As TEP serves adults, the local funds allocated for adult job training seemed a logical choice.

Again, our question is not about the Transitional Employment Program. We question the process by which the decision was made – a process that left out not only the public, but the DC Council as well.

We recognize that we cannot go backwards and undo these decisions. But we can ask that the District government move forward by ensuring that the local funds set aside in the FY2012 budget for adult job training are used for that purpose, and that the funds are disbursed via a transparent and rigorous RFP process.

We understand from Acting DOES Director Lisa Mallory that RFPs for adult job training will be issued very early in FY2012. She promised that these RFPs will ask a lot of prospective providers in terms of data collection and outcomes. But she also promised a commitment to clarity and to transparency throughout the process, a commitment we find encouraging.

We’ll be watching and keeping you informed every step of the way.

Working Together to Get People to Work

One of the biggest challenges to the effective functioning of the District of Columbia’s workforce development system is that it really isn’t a system at all.

Let me explain.

Workforce development activities in the District are funded by no fewer than eight different federal and local funding streams. Each one of these funding streams comes with its own set of goals – and its own set of restrictions.

For example, the District’s One-Stops are funded with federal money available under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA).[1] To utilize that funding, the District – through the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES) – has to agree to achieve certain performance measures in a given year. These performance measures include placing a certain percentage of adults in employment, ensuring a certain percentage of those placed stay in those jobs for at least six months, and ensuring those placed earn wages above a certain level. These performance measures are subject to approval by the US Department of Labor.

The DC Jobs Council is very supportive of performance measures in principle. We believe that anyone receiving taxpayers’ money should be accountable for how it is used.

The problem is that, in order to achieve the negotiated performance standards, the One-Stops assist only the clients most likely to succeed – a practice called “creaming.” This approach appears perfectly rational: when you have limited resources, and set goals, you are going to deploy those resources in a manner that ensures you meet your goals.

But while it may appear rational, it may not be in the best interests of those District residents most in need of assistance. Tens of thousands of the District’s unemployed residents need assistance with job searches, job training, and overcoming barriers. WIA funding only helps to meet some of those needs.

But is there money somewhere to meet the other critical needs of those facing the highest barriers?

One of those barriers is literacy – or, more accurately, the lack thereof, a barrier faced by about one-third of our neighbors. Federal money for that purpose comes largely through Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, and the funding is distributed in the District via the Office of the State Superintended of Education’s Office of Adult and Family Education.

Another barrier faced by unemployed single parents is the lack of the resources to pay for basic needs while looking for a job or pursuing training. In some cases, the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) Employment Program can provide access to training for those parents who receive TANF, along with the cash assistance available to custodial parents through TANF. TANF is distributed to the District via the DC Department of Human Services’ (DHS) Income Maintenance Administration (IMA).

There are others, but you get the point. The District has access to a lot of sources of funding to facilitate workforce development, each with its own rules and regulations – and each coming through its own silo.

The DC Jobs Council has long advocated for some kind of mechanism within the District government to, at the very least, maintain a bird’s eye view of all of the activities in all of the workforce development silos. Even better would be an individual – or a group – who could actually have an impact on how the programs in these silos interact and – potentially – cooperate.

That’s why we were thrilled when Councilmember Michael A. Brown, chairman of the Committee on Housing and Workforce Development, convened a workgroup to discuss just how to facilitate this kind of cooperation – to start the work necessary to break down the silos. Brown and his staff invited representatives from advocacy organizations, think tanks, philanthropy, and service providers to meet and talk candidly about the silos.

Brown and his staff also invited representatives from the District agencies whose work has an impact on workforce development – DOES, DHS IMA, and OSSE’s Office of Adult and Family Education. But not one agency representative showed up. One agency representative had intended to join the meeting, but was told at the last minute she should not attend. One agency staffer simply refused, while another did not respond to the invitation. (However, to give credit where it is due, a representative from the Community College of the District of Columbia did attend.)

The workgroup will meet again in the near future. It is our understanding that agency representatives will be invited again. We hope they will attend.

Working together is the only way to ensure we can get every District resident back to work.

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[1] By statute, the District’s Workforce Investment Council (WIC) is responsible for overseeing how DC spends its WIA funding. However, the DC WIC is not designed to oversee or coordinate programs funded by other sources. We will address the WIC in more detail in a future blog post.