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STATEMENT BY REX HALL CHAIRMAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE WORKFORCE AGENCIES’ VETERANS’ AFFAIRS COMMITTEE AND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT, MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT BEFORE THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE
OF VETERANS’ AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON BENEFITS OCTOBER
30, 2001
My
name is Rex Hall. I am
Assistant Director of Program Operations with the Missouri Department
of Economic Development, Division of Workforce Development, and
Chairman of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies’ (NASWA)
Veterans’ Affairs Committee. NASWA
is the national organization of state officials responsible for
workforce security and workforce development services.
We administer the nation's employment service, veterans'
employment and training programs (Disabled Veteran Outreach Program (DVOP)/Local
Veteran Employment Representative (LVER)), unemployment insurance
laws, labor market information programs and, in almost all states, job
training or workforce development programs.
In most states, we are also responsible for coordinating
workforce development one-stop centers, and play an important role in
welfare-to-work services. Our
members are the lead officials in implementing the Workforce
Investment Act which Congress passed in August 1998. It
is a pleasure to be asked to testify before you today.
Over the past two years, our organization has testified before
this subcommittee, and staff from our national organization have
participated in the numerous working sessions sponsored by the
subcommittee in which we reviewed and provided comments on legislative
language. In addition,
the subcommittee staff have met with the state members of the NASWA
Veterans' Affairs Committee to discuss various legislative and related
program issues. On
behalf of the states, we wish to commend the subcommittee for
examining the veterans’ employment and training issues.
In particular, we appreciate the time and effort that Mr.
Kehrer and Mr. Houchins have spent in responding to our questions and
concerns. Both have made
themselves available for numerous meetings and conference calls with
our staff. We
wish to commend the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee for requesting
the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct a review of the
efficiency and effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Labor’s
administration of the DVOP and LVER programs.
Let me state up front that the state workforce agencies are
committed to providing this nation’s veterans with quality
employment and training services to assist them in transitioning from
military service to the civilian workforce.
We want to work with our federal partners, the U.S. Department
of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (USDOL/VETS),
in meeting this commitment. The publicly
funded workforce system has undergone a great deal of changes since
the passage of the Workforce Investment Act in 1998.
WIA passed by a wide bipartisan majority in part because it
was designed to permit communities and states to build a workforce
investment system that respects individual choices, reflects local
conditions, and results in increased employment, retention, and
earnings of participants, and increases occupational skills attained
by participants. The
DVOP and LVER programs are delivered through Employment
Service/One-Stop Career Centers that were codified under the Workforce
Investment Act. WIA made
changes in the way in which employment and training services were
delivered to employers and jobseekers.
As the GAO report states, Title 38 “has not been updated to
reflect the recent changes in the employment and training service
system introduced by WIA.” We
believe that it is now time to make changes to Title 38, Chapter 41,
and the federal oversight of the DVOP and LVER programs.
The
NASWA Veterans’ Affairs Committee met with GAO officials and
identified many of the findings in the report that face states in the
delivery of the DVOP and LVER programs.
In addition to these discussions, GAO interviewed state
workforce agency officials in 30 states and conducted on-site visits
in five states. NASWA
agrees with many of the findings and recommendations in the GAO
report. Some of the findings require legislative fixes, but others
can be addressed by changes in policy by USDOL/VETS and changes in the
grant agreements. I
recently had an opportunity to meet with the new Bush Administration
officials that are responsible for these programs.
These officials indicated a willingness to meet with the states
and discuss ideas states have to improve the DVOP and LVER programs. We are looking forward to working with the Administration,
Congress and the Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs) in developing
legislation to address the statutory needs.
Moreover, we stand ready to meet with the Administration in
addressing many of the policy-related and administrative grant issues
that can be updated and improved. GAO Recommendations for Congressional
Consideration
The
GAO report’s major conclusion is that the prescriptive nature of
Title 38 creates a one-size-fits-all approach for service delivery. This approach is ineffective because it does not account for
the fact that each state and one-stop center may have a different
approach to satisfying the needs of local employers as well as
different types of veterans who may need employment assistance.
NASWA agrees with this conclusion.
The
GAO identified several revisions to Title 38 that Congress should
consider. In particular, NASWA agrees that Congress should consider
revising Title 38 to: §
Provide states and local one-stops more discretion to decide
where to locate DVOP and LVER staff and provide states the discretion
to have half-time DVOP positions; §
Allow USDOL/VETS and states the flexibility to better define
the roles and responsibilities of staff serving veterans instead of
including these duties in the law; §
Provide USDOL/VETS with the flexibility to consider alternative
ways to improve administration and oversight of the staffing grants,
for example, eliminating the prescriptive requirements for monitoring
DVOP and LVER grants; §
Eliminate the requirement that USDOL/VETS report to the
Congress a comparison of the job placement rate of veterans with that
on non-veterans; §
Eliminate the requirement that USDOL/VETS report on Federal
Contractor Job Listings (FCJL); and, §
Make the DVOP and LVER grant funding cycle consistent with that
of other employment and training programs. This
past spring, USDOL/VETS published several new measures for the
Veterans’ Employment and Training Programs for public comment in the
Federal Register. NASWA
provided comments on these proposed measures and in our comments, we
stated that the proposed measures are an improvement over the current
performance accountability system because for the most part, the
measures focus more on what programs achieve and less on the number of
services provided by staff serving veterans.
As
suggested by GAO, the proposed measures remove the requirement to
compare the level and associated service outcomes provided to veterans
with those provided to non-veterans.
There appears to be some attempt to more closely align the
proposed measures with the recently released Wagner-Peyser measures
and some of the Workforce Investment Act measures.
Unfortunately, the proposed measures maintain the FCJL measure,
and in our comments, we recommended that this measurement be
eliminated. We strongly
urge Congress to include new measures in any re-write of Title 38. The
inconsistency of the DVOP and LVER grant funding cycle with other
employment and training programs has caused a great deal of problems
for states. By way of
background, unlike most other
Labor Department programs under the Workforce Investment Act, which
receive their funds on a program year cycle (July 1-June 30), the DVOP
and LVER programs are funded on a federal fiscal year cycle (October
1-September 30). This has
caused difficulties for states, especially in the past few years with
the delay in enactment of a final appropriations bill.
Because these grants are staffing grants, the delay caused
extreme problems in many states last year when final funding
notification was not provided until mid-January, nearly 14 weeks into
the fiscal year. Many
states’ grants had significantly changed from the previous year and
this late notification caused major program upheaval for states which
were forced to lay off staff and/or find jobs for veterans staff that
they could no longer afford to fund. The
above problems could be largely avoided if the DVOP/LVER grant was
awarded to states on a program year cycle, like most other federally
funded programs under the Workforce Investment Act.
In addition, provisions to allow for a two-year carryover would
greatly assist states in managing this program. We
would like to take this opportunity to thank the Chairman and Ranking
Member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee for writing to the
Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB), asking that the DVOP and LVER
programs be switched to the program year funding cycle.
We are hopeful that this change will be proposed in the
President’s FY 2003 budget request. Recommendations for Executive Action
The
GAO recommended that the Secretary of Labor establish more effective
management and monitoring of the DVOP and LVER programs.
In general, NASWA agrees with these recommendations which
direct USDOL/VETS to: §
Specify performance goals and expectations for serving veterans
and allow states the flexibility to present a plan for how states
intend to meet these goals and expectations; §
Implement, as soon as possible, a performance measurement
system that holds states accountable, reflects the agency’s goals
and expectations, and defines how the performance data should be
collected to ensure accuracy and reliability; §
Implement a performance management system for the state
grantees that provides incentives for meeting goals and penalties,
beyond corrective action plans, for not meeting goals; and, §
Update oversight guidelines and improve staff training to
ensure consistent monitoring of DVOP and LVER programs in one-stop
centers. We
think it is important to note that USDOL/VETS
can and has proposed a new performance measurement system for the DVOP
and LVER programs. However,
until Title 38 is changed and updated, by law, USDOL/VETS
must require states to report on various measures that do not make
sense in today’s one-stop environment.
It is imperative that the statutory changes are made also. GAO
found that USDOL/VETS’
oversight of the DVOP and LVER grants is inadequate.
We believe that the federal oversight of these programs is too
focused on process issues and overly burdensome grant requirements.
We agree with the GAO finding that USDOL/VETS’
federal monitoring effort, which includes on-site evaluations at every
local office, is often unproductive and redundant with other one-stop
monitoring done by the states. Moreover,
this oversight results in confusion about the lines of authority
between the federal and state monitoring staff and the DVOP and LVER
staff, who are state employees. The
time and effort that state workforce agencies spend on administering
the DVOP and LVER grant is far greater in relative terms than all
other workforce programs. In
particular, USDOL/VETS
has instituted a quarterly recapture process that creates a great deal
of problems for states and results in an inordinate amount of time
spent on the grant process. NASWA
strongly recommends that USDOL/VETS
eliminate this quarterly recapture process and provide states with a
full year’s worth of funding, with up to two years to spend any
carryover funds. In order
to protect small states, we recommend that USDOL/VETS
institute a hold harmless clause that provides these states with funds
that allow them to maintain a minimum number of staff to operate a
program. Conclusion
In
summary, NASWA agrees with most of the findings and recommendations
made in the General Accounting Office report.
We look forward to working with Congress, the Administration
and Veterans’ Service Organizations in addressing the issues
identified in the report, and believe that the changes will result in
improved services to this nation’s veterans. The
world of the publicly-funded workforce development system is an
ever-evolving environment. Title 38, Chapters 41 and 42, which
established the veterans' employment and training system, were written
over a quarter century ago when one-on-one service was the norm and
programs were funded at a level that allowed for this type of personal
service for all jobseekers. Legislative
and prescriptive service delivery systems which are outmoded and
outdated must change if we truly want to provide our customers with
the most efficient and convenient services that focus on their current
and future needs. On behalf of the states, we commend the subcommittee for conducting an open process in gathering input on these programs. We appreciate the opportunity to testify before this committee and look forward to continuing to work together in developing comprehensive legislation that truly brings the veterans' employment and training programs into the 21st century. I would be happy to answer any questions. Back to Witness List |