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Strickland education chiefs divert millions from ODJFS to Regents to fund unfunded skills bank
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Ohio Education Chancellor Eric Fingerhut
(Photo/Ohio Board of Regents)
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Another example of budgetary prestidigitation, the kind that uses funds for one purpose for another, that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has performed earlier this year and been roundly criticized for, is about to happen again, this time when the state's top education chiefs divert $3 million from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (ODJFS) to the Board of Regents (OBR) to fund a skills bank program the General Assembly chose not to fund earlier this year during the debate over the biennial budget.
Workforce Investment Act (WIA) insiders familiar with the situation informed this Examiner that the mystery millions will be redirected from ODJFS to OBR to pay regional administrators associated with the un-funded Ohio Skills Bank (OSB). They question why workforce related funds are being usurped for education.
Redirection of ODJFS funds to OBR questioned
Through an exchange of emails with an ODJFS spokesman who was offered an opportunity to comment on this story before it ran, the substance of this story was confirmed. But instead of tapping a dedicated fund for retraining unemployed workers, as was thought to be the case, the $3 million identified was sitting in a rotary account derived from penalty and interest payments traditionally used for administrative costs of unemployment insurance and employment programs.
The funds, according to ODJFS spokesman Brian Harter, were offered (by ODJFS) in order to complete "that portion of the work which was intended to benefit the workforce system." Harter said ODJFS is providing the funds to provide "a product which provides local workforce systems with a regionally validated picture of current and future local employer skill demands supported by specifically identified courses arranged in career pathways addressing such regional skill demands."
The money will not be transferred until an agreement specifying the deliverables is finalized
between the agencies, Harter added.
Ohio Skills Bank created as part of Strickland strategy for competing globally
In November of 2007, ODJFS, then under its first director, Helen E. Jones-Kelly, released an announcement by Strickland that said OSB was an important component of the governor's campaign to TurnAround Ohio and would align workforce programming with economic development goals in an effort to embrace regional planning as a strategy for Ohio to adjust to the changing global knowledge economy.
This so-called “sector strategy” program model would bring key regional industry groups together with service providers to determine common workforce needs and design shared education and training solutions. Regional Ohio Skills Banks operations were funded with a regional coordinator and grant support to undertake system building improvements in partnership with employers. Most OSB consortiums were comprised of educators only and some regions interacted with only a few, if any employers. Those with close knowledge of how workforce funds are being used in Ohio said the Workforce Investment Boards were rarely, if ever, invited to OSB activities, even though their boards are by law required to be comprised of 51 percent business representatives and employers.
Moreover, even though the Ohio General Assembly chose to not fund the OSB earlier this year during the regular two-year budget debate, it appears higher education czar Eric Fingerhut nonetheless intends to redirect the $3 million found by long-time Ohio education policy guru and wonk Paolo DeMaria to the OBR, where it will flow to fund regional bureaucrats, as some concerned WIA workers contend.
According to Harter, the program went to the OBR because Chancellor Fingerhut "felt that it dovetailed with the planning needs of OBR and wanted to expand and integrate it into the ongoing processes of OBR." Our needs were a subset of that vision, Harter wrote. He added that the OSB was approved by the Unemployment Compensation Advisory Council (UCAC), a 12-member group comprised of a bipartisan panel of legislators, employer representatives, and employee representatives. The six lawmakers on the UCAC are House members Robert Hackett and Kenny Yuko and Sens. Capri Cafaro, Steve Buehrer and Karen Gillmor. One House lawmaker position is vacant.
Administration officials shared the news of the money find and its redirection with local workforce investment program administrators at a recent meeting in Columbus.
Insiders familiar with the dynamics of the WIA and its implementation in Ohio, say Fingerhut has too closely followed the advice of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in designing a University System of Ohio, that combines adult basic education, career technical schools, community colleges, four-year bachelor granting colleges and graduate-degree granting universities.
Other states have done similar consolidation work that has greatly improved college credit development of partnerships with industry credentials and apprenticeships, as well as lead statewide movement in assessment standards, this Examiner was told. Some critics claims that little has been accomplished on the production side. They say too much time is being spent on gatherings where educators discuss proposed but rarely if ever implemented improvements in assessment of Ohio’s dislocated workers or credit bearing structures for proposed “stackable certificates." Harter challenged this statement, saying ODJFS is not agreeing to provide the funds to support local meetings of educators.
In the state of Georgia, its Governor, Sonny Perdue, declared that everyone in the state – including him and his leadership -- will be assessed for the national Career Readiness Certificate. This approach has benefited other states to improve their collaboration among educational divisions and institutions and sometimes reduced state overhead. But this approach, according to some, is not necessarily being followed in Ohio, which built up post secondary institutions during the days when the state’s population and share of the country’s economic strength was considerably higher.
Gov. Strickland, Education Chancellor Fingerhut and the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) determined there was a need for an additional layer of administrative bureaucracy known as the Ohio Skills Bank, which would have regional administrative coordinators.
Harter rejoined that ODJFS is not "providing these funds to shore up a partner agency" but that "the need that led to the creation of the program still remains."
Oddly enough, both ODJFS and ODOD have simultaneously invested in private company training for some employers to avert layoffs and closures rather than deploying the University System of Ohio to train Ohio’s manufacturing workers, thereby providing them with post secondary educational credentials and college credit – a practice that would also help to raise Ohio’s statistics on the educational strength of its massive manufacturing laborforce.
WIA insiders say that when the state was underwriting the OSB, there was no interest by ODOD or OBR to work with the state’s workforce investment boards, which were not mentioned in the Governor’s Ohio Skills Bank/TurnAround Ohio description. But now that funds are tight for everyone, and given the legislature did not see fit to continue funding for yet another layer of higher education’s administrative expense of the OSB, Chancellor Fingerhut has been lobbying federally and within the state for WIA funds to be directed to the OSB.
Apparently undaunted by the absence of an approved budget by the General Assembly, DeMaria, who advised Republican Gov. Bob Taft on education issues during his eight years in office, and Fingerhut approached Doug Lumpkin, the new director of the ODJFS, and indicated that overlooking the public workforce development system and employers in the creation of the OSB could be remedied by bending funds to the OBR to cover the OSB regional coordinators and their related expenses.
DeMaria, as someone with knowledge of situation explained it, "mysteriously discovered” the $3 million dollars sitting idle in the ODJFS family services budget. How these dollars could be orphaned when hundreds of thousands of unemployed former manufacturing workers who need to be assessed for their 21st century skills and trained for jobs of the future has yet to be explained.
This sleight of hand seems remeniscent of previous attempts by the Strickland to divert one pot of money to another mission. This time, the transfer of funds, according to some, will go to create higher education administrative infrastructure, but at the regional level.
Is the workforce development door at ODJFS revolving again?
Stay tuned as I report tomorrow on news that another ODJFS workforce leader has been shown the door. Workers in the WIA system say progress cannot be made when people picked to lead are continually shown the door. Strickland, who sounded a positive note when he hired Linda O'Connor , said little when she was fired.
Follow me on Twitter @ohionewsbureau. Read more stories on people, politics and government in Ohio here.
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