Governor Signs Three ‘Foundational’ Workforce Bills

Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed three bills into law Monday that he said represent a fundamental shift in the state’s workforce development efforts.

“This I see is foundational,” he said during a bill signing ceremony at the Capitol. “It is a momentum changer. It is going to set the course for success in Arkansas in terms of job skill training.”

Perhaps the most far-reaching of the three measures is Act 892 by Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock. The bill creates the Office of Skills Development within the Department of Career Education to award workforce training grants to public and private organizations. As part of the Department of Career Education, it establishes a Career Education and Workforce Development Board composed of representatives from various industrial sectors, along with nonvoting members from various state agencies. The board will create a comprehensive program for career education and workforce development and will supervise all vocational, technical and occupational education programs. It and the State Board of Education together will administer state and federal adult education funds.

Senate Bill 891 by English, the Workforce Initiative Act, creates a program awarding planning and implementation grants by the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board to regional organizations to create economic development strategies.

Act 907, by Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton, is the federally mandated Arkansas Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which distributes federal funds to workforce investment boards across the state.

Gov. Hutchinson said the model created by these three acts establishes a role for business leaders to set priorities; creates a partnership between high schools, two-year schools and technical schools in workforce training; funds programs that are successful; and coordinates state agencies behind an initiative led by the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet.

Hutchinson was flanked by an array of the state’s leaders in economic development and education: Mike Preston, who was working his first day as director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission; Education Commissioner Johnny Key; Dr. Brett Powell, the state’s new director of the Department of Higher Education; Dr. Charisse Childers, director of the Department of Career Education; and Daryl Bassett, director of the Department of Workforce Services. Randy Zook, president and CEO of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, also was on hand.

Sen. English helped set the tone for the legislation by insisting that the state retool its workforce development efforts as a condition for her being a deciding vote for the Medicaid private option in the 2014 fiscal session.

“My goal is that when (Preston) sits down and talks to a company both somebody outside the state, inside the state, he can say, ‘These are the things we’re doing to make a workforce available for you,’” she said after the bill signing.