SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 4897 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

SUBCOMMITTEE: 21ST CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS

HEADLINE: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT ACT OVERSIGHT

TESTIMONY-BY: BRUCE STENSLIE, DIRECTOR

AFFILIATION: VENTURA COUNTY WORKFORCE

BODY:
Statement of Bruce Stenslie Director, Ventura County Workforce

Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness Committee on House Education and the Workforce

September 12, 2002

Good afternoon Chairman McKeon and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for your invitation to present comments today on the important matter of America's Workforce Investment system.

My name is Bruce Stenslie. I serve as the Director of the Ventura County, California, Workforce Investment Board and Deputy Director of the Ventura County Human Services Agency. As such I have the pleasure to represent both a progressive Workforce Board, dedicated to the highest ideals of system development, and a County whose Board of Supervisors has long advocated for welfare reform through a strategy that integrates workforce, education and economic development strategies. Before I comment specifically on the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), I would like to provide a short background on our local workforce environment. Ventura County is on the south coast of California, just north of Los Angeles. We have a robust and diverse local labor market, with a current unemployment rate of 5.3%, out of a labor force of 429,000. Job growth has been steady and balanced, with a strong and stable agricultural workforce and growing opportunities in construction, services and retail trade. In contrast to trends throughout most of California and the nation, manufacturing continues to expand, with its high paying jobs contributing to our higher end household earnings. Just this past summer, a Forbes/Milken survey ranked Ventura County as the nation's 3rd most attractive market for business and careers, out of a total listing of 200 metropolitan areas. Notable on the negative side, however, Ventura County was just this month identified as the 19th most expensive housing market in the country, contributing to economic developers' concerns that housing affordability may become a damper on job growth.

Matching our diverse labor market, we have an extremely well represented and active Workforce Board, engaging some of the nation's most successful businesses and employers. Represented on our Board are Countrywide Home Loans, the largest home loan originator in the country; Los Robles Regional Hospital, owned by HCA, one of the nation's leading health care providers; WellPoint Health Networks, Inc., recently identified by Fortune Magazine as the nation's most admired health care company for the 4th consecutive year; and Procter & Gamble, to name only a few. We also benefit from active and effective labor participation.

Our Workforce Board recognizes that our continuing prosperity is linked inextricably to strong national and local workforce system leadership. We want to thank your Subcommittee for your work in continuing to focus attention on how federal investments translate to services at the local level.

What guides our comments today is our recognition that our rapidly changing labor markets require an ever more integrated workforce investment system, continuously greater investments in career education, and that we must be equally attentive to the needs of both businesses and job-seekers in our work.

Our comments today focus on three issues: 1) what works in our local system; 2) some challenges to WIA implementation; and 3) recommendations on WIA reauthorization. The challenges and implementation items are taken up together, as we believe legislative attention and federal leadership can relieve each of the challenges.

I. SUCCESSES AND PROMISING PRACTICES: Our remarks here are not intended to champion our own cause, but rather to add to your Subcommittee's familiarity with some of the things that are happening under the aegis of WIA. We hope that you share our enthusiasm for what has been achieved by our nation's workforce system, and that you share our pride in what has been accomplished over the last four years.

1. Integrating welfare reform and workforce investment: Perhaps our primary achievement in Ventura County is that we have developed a fully integrated One-Stop Job & Career Center system for implementing both welfare reform and the Workforce Investment Act. We have done this not by emphasizing service to welfare clients, but rather by elevating welfare services to become an essential element of our comprehensive workforce system. Our implementation of this strategy has benefited enormously from the unflagging support and visionary policy direction of our County Board of Supervisors.

We want to emphasize that we have not turned our One-Stops into welfare centers. Our prevailing vision is to serve the workforce and education needs of the whole community, for job seekers and businesses alike, and we deliver this by working through the guidance of WIA for integrated One-Stop services.

We strongly believe that maintaining two separate employment systems--one for welfare recipients and one for every one else-- is a colossal waste of money and ultimately ineffective. It is ineffective particularly for employers, who have no patience for searching through multiple publicly financed systems for workers, and ineffective for welfare recipients, who through separate systems are not truly encouraged to move into the mainstream economy.

Three points help characterize our integration of welfare (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF) and WIA:

--First, our One-Stops serve as the access points for TANF eligibility, ensuring that welfare participants are immediately afforded the full resources of the workforce system.

--Second, we use a single process for securing and delivering initial job search and preparedness workshop services through our One-Stop system, for clients as diverse as dislocated workers and welfare recipients. The services are customized for different client needs, but the delivery is through a single administrative structure. There is no segregation in the service strategy, either administratively or programmatically, driven by whether the client is a welfare recipient.

--Third, this administrative process operates under the policy guidance of the Workforce Investment Board, transferring significant policy discretion for TANF services to the Workforce Board and to our community's business leadership, far beyond what is contemplated statutorily. In this manner our Workforce Board and County Board of Supervisors truly engage in a partnership for advancing services to our client communities.

We would like also to take this opportunity to applaud your Subcommittee's continuing look into improving TANF and One-Stop services and encourage your Subcommittee to press further toward resolving conflicting program requirements through federal guidance.

2. Employed and incumbent worker training: We have had some excellent local success through the delivery of customized employed worker training. We emphasize the importance of employed and incumbent worker development for four essential reasons:

--First, by expanding our horizons to employed workers we more effectively assure that our Board and local One-Stop system engage the whole spectrum of workers and employers, and not narrowly confine ourselves to "eligible" populations and entry workers. Neither employers' nor workers' needs are restricted in this manner; we need to assure that neither is our system.

--Second, our recent success in welfare reform has it such that well over half of our adult welfare recipients are working, but still on aid owing to low earnings. Our work doesn't stop when a welfare recipient or any worker is employed, but rather continues to help clients attain self-sufficiency and to become full participating members of the labor force. This requires a continuing engagement with employers and an emphasis with workers on understanding the importance of continuing career education.

--Third, as an element of our rapid response program, we are extremely interested and aggressive in layoff aversion, as an alternative to picking up the pieces after business closures and job loss. We have documented the prevention of layoffs by investing in business through employed and incumbent worker training, to improve their skills and to keep them employed.

--Fourth, everything we know about the changing workforce and economy is that continuing education and career growth is essential. Workers change jobs, and careers, at an ever- increasing frequency. Employers no longer demonstrate the same commitments to individual workers, and look to hire the right new skills as workplace needs evolve. Both workers and businesses need to recognize that--with these changes in our work environment--the key to success is an increasing investment in worker training. By such investments we improve job retention and reduce the costs of worker turnover.

We need to assure that the Workforce Investment Act offers every opportunity and option to expand efforts in incumbent worker training. If WIA funded activities and local One-Stop centers are not part of this equation then WIA will surely fail the test of relevance to our clients.

3. Business Enhancement Program and economic development: One of our most successful programs is through a partnership with our local Economic Development Collaborative, to conduct a Business Enhancement Program. Through this program we identify businesses that might be at risk of failure, then assure they access the resources to continue as a viable employer. This business outreach partnership helps assure that our One-Stops are engaged with business, as a means to keep workers in place and to improve the capacity of business to accommodate workers moving into the labor force.

4. Targeted discretionary training programs: One of the most encouraging elements of WIA is that it delivers a strong measure of discretionary funding to states, allowing for and encouraging innovation in responding to local workforce needs. We believe it is out of this component that some of the best achievements have been delivered.

Following some strong statewide workforce leadership in California we have used discretionary funding to respond effectively to issues raised by local businesses and workers. Some examples follow:

--Caregivers Training Initiative: Part of a larger statewide initiative to respond to the needs of our aging population, this program recruits and trains clients to enter into and advance in the field of home health care and the related professional and technical medical occupations. In Ventura County alone this project has resulted in the training of over 70 clients to advance through career ladders to better paying occupations and at the same time responds to a shortage of workers in service to our older Americans.

This project is now expanding in Ventura County into a broader Medical Career Ladders Initiative, to address the broader spectrum of nursing and technical professions in the medical industry. As your Subcommittee is aware, the shortage of nurses and other technically trained medical professionals has reached crisis proportions. Discretionary WIA revenues are serving not only to fund the training of workers, but to drive systemic change resulting in our community's improved capacity to respond to this need.

--Technology to Teaching: This project assists laid off high technology workers transition into new employment as teachers, particularly in the high demand fields of science and mathematics. The initiative is not only effective for its re- employment service, but because it responds to a critical shortage of math and science teachers in California's schools. Again, WIA resources are being targeted to where need and opportunity collide. Over 30 dislocated workers just recently entered this program in Ventura County, with many more qualified applicants continuing to express interest. Statewide this program will contribute to the development and credentialing of hundreds of new math and science teachers.

--Home Builders Training Initiative: Currently under development for implementation this fall, this initiative was born by the recognition of both labor and builders organizations that we are not adequately developing a trained workforce to keep pace with industry demand and opportunity. In partnership with Ventura Community College we are starting a new pre-apprenticeship program that will both train workers where demand is immediate and prepare clients for longer-term career opportunities through labor apprenticeships.

What these initiatives demonstrate is that the targeting of resources to specific needs and opportunities in local labor markets can provide a strong return on investment. One of the difficulties of the WIA is that in its "universal access" emphasis it requires our One-Stop systems to "be all things to all people." While we believe it is beneficial to create this baseline network, we are concerned that our resources will not be adequate to respond to specific needs and opportunities as they arise. The discretionary funding component helps assure that we can respond.

Along this vein we would like to give credit to the Labor Department for its recent establishment of its Business Relations Group, for the purpose of partnering with business to address specific industry training needs and opportunities. Initiatives through this new office have helped us in our local area respond both to some extraordinary hiring opportunities with Home Depot's recent expansion and with HCA Healthcare, for responding to the national shortage of nurses and other technically trained professionals in the health care industry.

5. Youth development: This is an area of service in California that the Workforce Investment Act has truly helped transform into the highest ideals of system development and service integration. Some 29 of California's 50 Youth Councils (with more joining every day) have taken on the systems building challenge of WIA and recently participated in a new Youth Council Institute, through which our local systems receive leadership training on implementing comprehensive youth development systems. Our own local Youth Council is extremely well represented from throughout the community and active in program and policy initiatives, assuring that our WIA investments are complementary to and leverage other revenue sources, from as diverse as juvenile justice to services for disabled youth.

Resulting, for example, from our targeting of services in response to local need, our youth services system enrolled 218 youth with disabilities, out of 764 total, or 28.5%. This service profile demonstrates that our system is effective in filling a locally identified need for serving youth with significant barriers to education and career advancement.

Recently our Youth Council absorbed the best of our last decade's School-to-Career efforts toward linking our local business and education communities. This joining of efforts is helping to assure that our educators are aware of business needs and our youth are exposed to opportunities in mentoring, job shadowing and to the values of life long learning. In Ventura County, local businesses and the Chambers of Commerce are strong partners with educators, addressing the long-term question of whether our local education system is responsive to the changing needs of business and of workers in the new economy.

6. Workforce Boards as leaders in community advocacy and policy: One of the most important agendas taken on by our Workforce Board is to advance our community's education and dialogue on workforce issues. One means of advancing this agenda is through the development of a coherent picture of the local workforce, specifically the production of a comprehensive local State of the Workforce Report. This document will for the first time in a single volume provide a baseline of information on the local workforce that will serve both to support and spur on meaningful dialogue about how essential a trained workforce is to economic vitality.

Our first State of the Workforce Report will be unveiled and serve as the centerpiece this October to our community's Business Outlook Conference, sponsored by our County's primary business advocate organization, the Ventura County Economic Development Association. This event draws over 300 community leaders annually and is our area's single most important forum to address our local business climate. The Report addresses a full range of issues on the labor force, including demographic profiles, analyses of income distribution, availability of adequate child care and of various public assistance resources. The Report also addresses how workforce policy and labor markets are impacted by the cost and availability of affordable housing and transportation networks. Not just a statistical compilation, the Report is analytical and focused on the health of our workforce environment.

This emphasis on the production of data, research and analysis is matched by our Workforce Board's emphasis on the delivery of a broad spectrum marketing approach, both to inform potential clients about specific services and to educate the community that business leaders, educators, labor and economic development leadership are united in advocating for a strong workforce system and for expanding opportunities for workers and businesses.

This kind of workforce leadership activity, while allowable prior to WIA, was certainly not the norm, as prior emphasis was more narrowly on service delivery and not the development of comprehensive systems. This new Workforce Board leadership under WIA, along with new integrated One-Stop service strategies through broad community partnerships, are the foundations of WIA's success.

II. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN REAUTHORIZATION: In the following, barriers to success and reauthorization items are taken up together, as we believe legislative attention and federal leadership can relieve each of the challenges.

1. Improve alignment and coordination between multiple funding sources and programs:

a. Align reporting and outcome requirements between TANF and WIA:

One of our greatest concerns is that these two programs, though sharing in the goal of helping individuals obtain long-term self- sufficiency through employment, in fact have very different rules for program participation and reporting. While we support the primary strategy of moving welfare recipients quickly into workplace attachments, we are dismayed that our WIA workforce systems are often constrained from engaging welfare recipients into appropriate basic and career education.

We strongly recommend that when a welfare client is enrolled into WIA sponsored training, the client should be exempted for the duration of the training from the TANF mandates for minimum hourly employment requirements. We are not recommending that we abandon the default commitment to work first strategies; rather, we are advocating that when our workforce system concludes that initial training is the right path to self-sufficiency, the rules should allow our workforce professionals to deliver that service. If training is the recommended workforce solution, and we have as a goal to deliver a seamless service to our client communities, then we should not restrict a client's access to training simply because they are a TANF recipient.

b. require more effective local engagement by all One-Stop partners;

The Act should be amended to require more effective local engagement by all One-Stop partners. Currently, local Boards and administrators have little to no leverage to require local participation, and few incentives to offer those who do engage. The result of this non-participation is that WIA dollars pay an extraordinary share of One-Stop infrastructure costs for core services, leaving little revenue for training. Though the number of workers and businesses accessing our Centers is astronomical (we are serving over 6,000 unduplicated clients monthly in our One-Stop system), we see reports out of WIA that show declining outcomes in training, leading policy makers to conclude there is a declining return on investment. In addition, with One-Stop partners not fully participating in the local One-Stops, training that is achieved through non-WIA revenues is not reported through the WIA system. Though successful in the field, the reported numbers lead to a different conclusion. Federal leadership on this will be essential to move many of the partner agencies into better One-Stop engagement.

The primary challenge in WIA is that even as far as the Act has gone toward encouraging multiple program partnerships through the One-Stop system, we still ultimately maintain completely separate funding, reporting and administrative systems. Over the long-term this may ultimately erode the current advances in One-Stop partnerships, which have, to be fair, been considerable. We believe that one of our most important local successes has been the partnership environment and leveraging at our One-Stop Centers. At the same time, we are aware that funding from other than WIA revenues must in greater measure contribute to the One- Stop infrastructure.

2. Improve funding to support the One-Stop infrastructure and to deliver needed training: Though it is not technically part of reauthorization, your continuing support for adequate funding is essential. As a representative of a local area, we are encouraged by the recent GAO report that documents that WIA revenues are being spent in the field.

One extraordinary problem we experience is the chronic under- funding of the Adult Services stream. Given the new emphasis on universal access, and its broad array of core services for all clients who enter our doors, we need more support to assure we can provide an adequate baseline of services, and still fully invest in worker training and re-training.

With the implementation of WIA the law vastly expanded the requirement for local areas to serve local populations, yet we have been provided virtually no new financial resources to carry out this new service obligation. We believe absolutely that we are better off in the new workforce system with this broader mandate. We are equally concerned, however, that without additional funding it is inevitable that there will be a drop off in WIA funded training investments. There simply is not enough money to provide a baseline of services for the growing target population and provide the same level of training. Increased federal investment through WIA formula revenues is one part of the solution; improved levels of "mandated One-Stop Partner" investments in the One-Stop system is the other. Both of these solutions require strong federal leadership.

3. Reduce or eliminate current restrictions on employed and incumbent worker training:

As noted elsewhere above, one of the areas we believe holds the most promise for assuring that WIA becomes essential for the advancement of workers' and business' needs is the option to provide employed and incumbent worker training. While this activity is allowable, it is in the end highly constrained by language in the Act and implementing regulations.

There is no need for these restrictions, as there is elsewhere in the Act, under the Adult program, for example, language that directs local Workforce Areas to establish and certify that local policy prioritizes service to clients with the greatest barriers to success. Other sections of the Act rightly require that we document through policy debate what should be the upper pay range a worker may fall within and still be eligible for the receipt of WIA services. If there is concern that local areas will somehow abandon services for those out of the labor force--in a rush to invest in employed workers--we believe the concern is profoundly misplaced. As noted, numerous other safeguards on this are in place and will continue. Our concern should instead be that WIA resources are allowed to be delivered to benefit a broad spectrum of worker and business needs.

Strong federal leadership expressed through the reauthorization of WIA could remove the unnecessary restrictions to employed and incumbent worker training.

4. Improve the performance measurement/accountability system: Our recommended adjustments here are not to reduce the Act's emphasis on accountability, but rather to address the current system's deficiencies. Three specific opportunities for positive change include:

a. System outcomes: Our primary concern is that the current system fails to address any comprehensive system outcomes, and is wholly blind to the Act's requirement to provide "core services" to all clients who enter our One-Stop system.

The current set of 17 mandated measures fails to address the workforce system as a whole, and focuses instead on individual program elements. This is especially problematic given that enormous effort and resources are taken up creating the infrastructure for the universal access component of WIA core services. WIA is all about the development of comprehensive systems, transcending the important but ultimately narrow focus on specific program interventions. We are not recommending the elimination of the current program measures, only that we also recognize and measure the other systemic achievements of our networks relating to system development.

In Ventura County alone we have some 70,000 unduplicated visitors to our One-Stops annually, yet none of the current federal reporting or performance measures recognize this extraordinary system vitality. The Act directs the creation of this system, then maintains a performance measurement system that has not evolved along with the system development. Your Subcommittee could remedy this in reauthorization by directing the Labor Department to develop appropriate system measures in consultation with local Workforce Boards and One-Stop Operators.

b. Business outcomes: Not only is the performance measurement system lacking in system measures, it almost completely fails to recognize that our outcomes must be responsive to business needs. Only one of the current 17 measures--employer customer satisfaction--addresses a business perspective. While the other measures are not anathema to business interests, the measures are wholly focused on job-seeker and trainee outcomes. This must change if we are to take seriously the position that the two equal customers in our workforce system are workers and the businesses that hire them.

c. Outcome measure adjustments for client populations served: It is extremely odd in our opinion that the WIA requires that we "prioritize" services, for example, under the Adult program, to "hard-to-serve" client populations, but then does nothing to recognize the mix of clients served in calculating performance outcomes. The result is there is no incentive, nor reward, for serving clients with difficult barriers, and every incentive to not. This is easily fixed. Adjust the Act to require more specifically that the Labor Department, States and local areas take into consideration client characteristics in negotiating and calculating final performance levels.

5. Adjust youth program eligibility to match adults: One of the greatest advances of the WIA was to eliminate the strict income eligibility test for Adult program services. The Act does not abandon for adults our attention on the disadvantaged, and still safeguards that attention through requiring our "priority" focus remains on those with the most need. Status of "most in need" and "at risk" characteristics can be determined by looking at other indicators aside from income. Unfortunately, none of these innovations were carried over to the youth program, where strict income eligibility tests still dominate program outreach and delivery.

In California, and Ventura County specifically, our Youth Councils are adopting the proven-effective elements of Youth Development as our guiding principles, pledging to create a new "All Youth, One System" approach for the betterment of our communities. Yet, with the strict income eligibility requirements we rarely can deliver on this goal, and routinely turn away youth who can benefit from our services, only because they fail to fall under certain, though arbitrary, family income standards.

We strongly recommend that the WIA amendments address this problem and either adopt for youth programs the adult program eligibility structure, or allow local boards the flexibility to define youth eligibility guidelines consistent with local needs, still attentive to clients with the greatest barriers to success.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this information for your Subcommittee's consideration. We hope that we have provided some insight into the kinds of achievements the Workforce Investment Act has supported over the last several years. We believe the Act and the nation's workforce system can be strengthened even more through WIA reauthorization and some minor but significant adjustments as noted above.

Should you have questions or comments, I would be most happy to respond. I may also be reached as indicated below.

Sincerely,

BRUCE STENSLIE

Administrative Director Ventura County Workforce Investment Board and Human Services Agency

LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2002