Workforce Education Revamp Hearings Begin Tuesday

State lawmakers will begin a series of meetings to review and revamp Arkansas’ workforce education and training programs on Tuesday (June 24).

Sen. Jane English (R-North Little Rock) will lead the Joint Performance Review Committee through several meetings this week and beyond. Tuesday’s first meeting will center on a review of all workforce programs in the state.

“We’re asking the agencies to come and talk about the programs they have, the resources they have,” said English, who provided her swing vote for funding the Private Option in this year’s fiscal session in exchange for a massive overhaul of the state’s workforce training efforts.

In February, English, a former director of the state’s Workforce Investment Board at the Department of Workforce Services (DWS) and a one-time project manager at the Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC), said altering workforce training and providing health insurance for working Arkansans are connected.

“My thing is if we don’t do it now, when are we going to do it?” said English when she secured the commitment for reforms in exchange for her Private Option vote. “We’ve got to get to the system where we turn the whole thing upside down and we provide a really good workforce system here that people can access with the kind of skills so that we don”t have to have everybody on food stamps, we don’t have to have everybody in the Private Option.”

Tuesday’s Joint Performance Review Committee will include the number and description of workforce training programs, all funding sources, the number of students and employees participating, and partnerships and evaluation methods.

Bill Walker, Director of the Arkansas Department of Career Education, and John Selig, Director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, are slated to make presentations. Also, representatives from Crowley’s Ridge Technical Institute and Northwest Technical Institute are on the committee’s agenda.

English tells Talk Business & Politics that additional meetings will circulate around the state this fall.

“That’s a big thing is to help educate legislators. If you live in Camden, you know what’s going on in Camden. But you need to know what’s going on in every place,” English said.

The Joint Performance Review Committee hearings are expected to lay the groundwork for changes in the 2015 legislative session. Advocates will seek a top-to-bottom review of all job training programs at two-year colleges statewide and a possible realignment of nearly $24 million in workforce training money.

A WORKFORCE CZAR
Gov. Mike Beebe and other workforce leaders said it is imperative to streamline the moving parts of workforce training in order to continue successful economic development.

“What we don’t have is the kind of coordinated, across-the-board, everywhere success stories that you would like to have, and workforce development may be the number one key to economic recruitment, retention, expansion,” Beebe said in a Talk Business & Politics TV interview this week. “We hear stories that a lot of people are unemployed and we’ve got a lot of jobs open and waiting. But the skill levels of the people unemployed don’t match the needs of business and industry so it’s part of the state’s responsibility.”

Beebe added, “What’s going on now — and Senator Jane English deserves a lot of credit, but so does my workforce cabinet — pooling the resources from all of those different resources that currently exist and trying to do it a comprehensive and cohesive way gets the best bang for the taxpayer’s buck.”

Beebe also said he’s open to the idea of a workforce czar, an in-charge authority who could make quick decisions without political recourse to accommodate industry needs and educational programs.

“[I]f a governor is not going to do it, a czar certainly could. But you could also have an agency that with a cabinet head that you designate as a lead to go get it done,” Beebe said. “Right now, the Legislature is doing a good job of being a czar on this expanded and collaborative effort. So I expect you’ll see, you may end up with, a bunch of czars which may be as problematic as not having one at all.”