City, county to combine work force development efforts
BYLINE: JAY MILLER
Work force development is catching the regionalization bug.
After more than two years of negotiations, the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have settled on terms of an intergovernmental agreement that will unify their work force development departments - and more work force collaborations could be on the way.
Quentin L. McCorvey Sr., vice president of corporate philanthropy and chairman of the combined Cleveland-Cuyahoga Workforce Investment Board, said because job seekers aren't constrained by borders, the public job-hunting organizations in other counties could better serve workers and employers by working together.
``We're not competing with Summit, Lake and Ashtabula counties (for jobs) - we're competing with Denver, Seattle and Chicago,'' Mr. McCorvey said. ``It's important to come together.''
An attitude of working together is in line with the thinking in the young administration of Gov. Ted Strickland.
Lisa Patt-McDaniel, the Ohio Department of Development's acting director of work force development, said the new administration was still getting people in place and working on the details of its work force policy. But, she added, ``We definitely want to encourage and incentivize people to work regionally.''
The unification of the staffs of the work force departments in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County is the final step in creating a single system in Cuyahoga County to manage worker-training and job-hunting programs financed by federal Workforce Investment Act funds. The unification began during the Taft administration, when state work force officials saw a need to streamline a cumbersome system.
Locally, the consolidation began when Cleveland and Cuyahoga County two years ago merged their work force investment boards, which are made up of business executives, union officials and government workers. The boards are required by federal guidelines to provide oversight to federally financed work force programs.
Soon after, the departments began to jointly operate their one-stop employment centers, which house a variety of employment services handled by contractors and consultants.
Finding common ground
The consolidation took so long because the city and county had to figure out how to mesh two bureaucracies that until now have had their own directors, offices and even pay scales.
That's because Cleveland, as a charter city, makes some of its own laws. Cuyahoga County, however, must follow state law. For example, said Dennis Roberts, director of the county's work force department, city-financed programs must abide by the Fanny Lewis Law, which sets guidelines for the hiring of Cleveland residents by contractors. County programs, however, follow state contracting law.
Under the arrangement finally worked out, key decisions, such as the hiring of an executive director and approval of the budget, must be agreed upon unanimously. The agency executive director will be a city employee and the county will be the agency's fiscal agent.
Mr. Roberts said he expects that, over time, these distinctions will blur.
The agency headquarters will be at 1020 Bolivar Road in downtown Cleveland, a building the city has been renovating for its work force offices.
The delay in merging the departments - separately budgeted at a total of $22.3 million in federal funds for 2007 - has not slowed down programs for job seekers, said Brian Reilly, the city's director of economic development.
Mr. Reilly the intergovernmental agreement principally governs a limited number of administrative and senior management jobs and functions, while the city and county contract most of the training and counseling programs at the 11 one-step centers around the county to outside organizations.