ALC-Hospital, Medicaid, & Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
Video
Transcript
4 documents
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 6, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
0:00
What we do be doing is looking at our social programs as well as our workforce system. And we have invited Nick Moore, who is the assistant acting assistant secretary of the Office of Career and Technical and Education, to speak to us today. Nick is not just a federal bureaucrat. Until recently, he was the chief workforce officer for the state of Alabama. So Nick understands the state and how we operate at the state level.
So I'm very glad to introduce him to you this morning. And Mr. Nick Moore, we're so pleased to have you here. Welcome to our committee meeting. Thank you,
Speaker 4
0:48
Senator. I appreciate you very much. And I'm going to share some slides here in just a second and then
Speaker 5
0:55
I can get that worked out. out but um just to kind of level set with you and give you some ideas about where we're coming from here um you know the idea of increasing the state's labor force participation rate and
really figuring out an opportunity for also increasing post-secondary attainment is what we're all about and also getting less i would say sort of overhead and system out of the money and getting more dollars in the hands of states and governors so that you can do the work of connecting your state's human resources talent development system and so that we're really thinking about workforce and education and training and human services as one integrated system and i
know that's what you all are are talking about today and so it's very exciting to have states like Arkansas that are taking advantage of a lot of the opportunities that we're hoping to bring to bear through the partnership between education and the Department of Labor. And so since, can y'all see my slides now? So since, perfect, since September, we've had a group of folks that have been detailed from the Office of Career, Tech, and Adult Education, and that's my office called
OCTAE to the Department of Labor, and we're implementing this partnership because on this first slide, what I want to lead off with is that Congress aligns the Every Student Conceives Act, Carl D. Perkins, and Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act that provides about 10 percent of the K-12 education and Perkins money to states, but these were really aligned by design to create an integrated T20 talent system so that we're helping students move through every stage
of transition from pre-K through the workforce. But in reality, that's not happened. I mean, there's been a hodgepodge of federal agencies that have been set up since the New Deal and Great Society. And concurrently, states have also erected their own
Speaker 4
3:04
bureaucracies. And I'll show you some data on my point of why we think that's problematic. But what we want to do is work with
Speaker 10
3:12
y'all to help live out a more integrated vision. And there's a lot of people up in D.C. who, you know, write white papers for a living who think that programs are only education programs or only
workforce programs. And I know that the work that y'all are doing,
Speaker 4
3:29
the work that we want to do with you is proving that academic and technical skills are not mutually exclusive. The CTE programs and workforce programs are in fact just you know different sides of the same coin and when it comes to our students our employers we're serving two
Speaker 10
3:45
customers their students and our families but also employers and so we can do both of
Speaker 12
3:53
living out their interests aptitudes and aspirations but also doing in a way that prepares them for
the next phase you know whether that's continuing their education or going directly to work or entering the military. So when we talk about WIOA, there's really four major titles or programmatic titles, and federally, Title I and III have always been at the Department of Labor, and Title II and IV have always been at the Department of Education. So I and III, Wagner, Pizer, and then Adult Youth and Dislocated Worker with Title I, that's been primarily what has funded the American Job Center
system and then adult education now primarily has been separate although it's title two of WIOA and a lot of times these are located in high schools or community colleges and then title four evoke rehab generally as it's in its own state agency and so very soon we will have under the department of labor what I call the one big beautiful department of talent All four of these WIOA titles under the same roof federally. So we hope that that's going to do a number of things,
but not least of which is for you to have fewer federal agencies to interact with when we come on site to do site visits and technical assistance to get one integrated team. When you submit a plan, whether it's a unified or combined plan, that you get feedback from one
Speaker 10
5:23
set of bureaucrats rather than getting conflicting information from two sets. And so on WIOA state plans, you know, it's been an option since 2020 to do a combined plan. Only nine states have done
Speaker 12
5:35
it because heretofore, it's been a great messaging exercise, but not so
much as far as actually having an aligned timeline for the dates to submit your Perkins and WIOA plan. And then as my previous point, sometimes you get conflicting feedback on those plans. So our goal now and what we've done for the 2026 mod, and you'll see in the next week or two, something we call the training employment guidance letter. It's basically just a memo from the Department of Labor and OTAE that says this is when you're every two years, you got to do a modification in the four year plan. So 26 is the modification. 28 will be the next big four year plan.
But we're letting states know, look, we've unfettered a lot of the red tape that's held you back. We're going to be accepting plans on or before April 30th, both for Perkins and WIOA, and we're going to have an integrated, fine-tuned group of people from my office and DOL that are doing the review. So hopefully several states, maybe even Arkansas, would lean into that and
Speaker 10
6:37
decide to submit a combined plan for this year. And so the importance of a combined plan is, I would
Speaker 12
6:44
say the biggest thing now will help
you with the implementation of workforce Pell. State boards and governors are going to have a bigger role in looking to your labor market information, you know, your primary LMI from your labor agency, state workforce agency, and coming up with a methodology for in-demand jobs and then the programs that are aligned to those. And so the states that submit the cleanest list of programs to the secretary of education not only will have an easier time getting those approved
but i also think it's going to be a point of competition among states that those that are implementing workforce pell in a way that's most aligned with their workforce and economic development needs and so some best practices you'll see in our teagle that we're going to be promoting this year for state plans and and going forward is more of a human human centered approach you know people when they walk in to the one stop or the community college they don't want to hear about wagner pies there they don't want to hear about title this or that they just want to know
how do i walk in figure out what jobs are available be able to assert what i know today look at what benefit cliffs I may be facing if
Speaker 10
8:02
I'm on SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, how do I allow myself to be held harmless so that I can upskill, get the training
Speaker 12
8:09
I need, but then also have a way so that I'm not becoming worse off in real dollar terms in the short term. So that's one of our big challenges in workforce development, why states like my own in Alabama and Arkansas have had
historically low labor force participation rates because the poverty trap is just so steep because we've done the right thing by not
Speaker 10
8:31
you know having a big bloated sort of entitlement system but what's tough is that when somebody begins transitioning off those sort of forms of assistance even though that it's not a tremendous amount of money often those benefits taper more
Speaker 12
8:46
quickly than they can make up for that in paid employment so we're at the federal level trying to simplify workforce
development to say rather than have 43 federally funded programs across nine agencies we want to do the making america skilled again essentially block grant so that we're not spreading these little jars of mayonnaise over a big old loaf of bread the governor and the state can figure out okay do we need to invest more in out-of-school youth do we need to shore up our talent pipeline in this one area. Is it in school youth? Is it adults? We're going to do two gen approach. We want to invest in our data system. We want to have fewer brick and mortar job centers, which is in
Alabama. What we discovered is that if you run myriad job centers, by the time you end up funding the bureaucracy and the brick and mortar for that, you don't have much left for training. So we also want to have more of an evangelical outreach. I always say not so much in a religious sense although that's fine too but to get out of our offices and to go and find people where they are and so we'll be messaging the states that you've got to have special populations focused populations in your state plan you know set labor force goals for each of those populations and then
let's hold ourselves accountable on whether we're actually hitting those you know not just putting down somebody they walked in and asked for direction to the 7-11 but what is what does the foot traffic look like how is it meaningful and then when it comes to the integrated case management system y'all have got a really good head start on most states with what you've got with arkansas launch with civiform with your integrated intake questions so imagine a world where we get to the point somebody walks in the job center you ask them six to twelve diagnostic
questions and in that process they could be potentially co-enrolled in SNAP, TANF, Medicaid if that's needed but primarily a job and training all in one setting so that it's not you don't get a different outcome based on what person you're talking to and you don't got to go back and see Sally on Thursday because she's only there from two to four but one person that's cross-trained across all of those programs to do you know co-enrollment for all of them and you'll see more flexibility coming out from us too around things like Wagner-Peyser merit system requirements
so that more people actually want to be a one-stop operator because you don't have to operate a big merit system bureaucracy staff in order to do so. So we'd love to see more community colleges, more libraries, but even better yet, virtual service delivery. And it's funny how, you know, A lot of states are going to this, I mean, because, and there's always going to be people who have the need for adaptive assistance or, you know, need help with literacy and other things. And that's, that's why, you know, we only requires there to be one comprehensive center. But in
the waiver or the sort of set of innovations that the Department of Labor came out with in November, you can even get past that so long as you're partnering with folks like voc rehab have to provide that adaptive assistance so no need to operate a vast comprehensive center just to serve a handful of people so I'll speed it up here a little bit and
Speaker 10
12:07
just say that just I won't read through all these because
Speaker 12
12:13
I hit on a couple of them but
a big thing is that we want to focus on a two gen approach and connecting our sort of in school programs and and for a long time people thought well we really need to focus on reserving our WIOA youth money for out-of-school youth my take on that is why don't we prevent them from becoming out-of-school youth and fish for them while they're in the net instead of letting kids sort of aimlessly go through high school and maybe they're not being met as far as their interests it's not lined up let's get them the type of training whether it's a pre-apprenticeship
whether it's some other form of work-based learning, and keep them connected so that they're not falling out of school and becoming not employed and not in training. And states can reserve a part for out-of-school youth where that's needed. But if we do it the right way with a two-gen approach, we're going to be working with families on either side of that spectrum and over time having many fewer out of school youth and also for people to be not that we're
tracking people or training somebody for the sprocket factory because they live next to it but a lot of times we find that our CTE programs that we're offering or the programs on our eligible training provider list are not connected with the labor market in regard to the way they should be and so again that's not to say that we're not you know have some flexibility or that you have to go into this job because you live in this one place but why would we not be doing a better job of saying here's the jobs that are in demand in your area here are the programs that
are available then working with our high schools to say look we're trying to make sure that we're filling this talent pipeline but you're running a bunch of cosmetology programs that have nothing to do really with our labor market demand. So when you're using that primary LMI, you've got those people involved in the state board, the governor's office is involved, the legislature's involved. It's much harder for somebody to be a stick in the mud and preserve those programs that aren't in demand because they see that stakeholders are really demanding that. And so just to take a
little bit of this into perspective, this is WIOA nationally and the reason why we've got to do a better jobs. So with over a half billion dollars, we trained less than 100,000 people. And very few of those were employed in the job for which they were trained the year after. And we were spending over $14,000 for these folks. And in many cases, you could send somebody through a four-year university for less than that. And so what's troubling is that if you've got a goal for
increase in the labor force participation rate let's say one percentage point it would take about three million people nationally to do that but only you know 240,000 people came
Speaker 10
15:11
out of the WIOA system again less than 100,000 were actually employed in the job for which they were trained so in any
Speaker 12
15:19
book you want to look at this is a failure and before you know the previous administration like to say yes we have a can well you know I don't think I don't think it can if
these are the results so that's part of what our project is here is to integrate this better with our youth serving programs and to get so much of the overhead out of the system and that's what's one of the big problems is that every bit of this is laden with bureaucracy both at the state and the federal level so that by the time you get down to brass tacks we're not spending enough of the money on training, and when we are spending it on training, we're running people through ITAs with a big eligible training provider list that has programs that aren't in demand, and we see
a lot of people cycling through ITAs every six months, and it's not doing anybody any good. So this is something that we're going to really be working with states to overcome, and we can do it, but we've got to make tough decisions. Not every one stop can remain open. We're going to have to cross-train people. We're going to have to cull that eligible training provider list to make sure that we're not training people into poverty. And we've got to do more informed customer choice. And I'll speak to that here in a minute. But the number one thing we've got to do is figure out
who are the people that we're really targeting. And when we're talking about people that are not in the labor force first, you've got to ask who are those that wants a job and those that don't. And when we're talking about labor force participation, we're talking about everybody 16 and above, right? And so when we think about 16 above, there's going to be at the front and the back end of that population, a lot of people that are young and are in school and they're not working for that reason. And there's a lot of people at the more senior end of things that are retired. So not everybody that's not in the labor force is our target. Our target is what is
the shadow labor force. And I don't say that in the pejorative
Speaker 10
17:19
sense, but shadow means that they've got first or last dollar problems that are preventing them from entering the labor force and persisting. Maybe they're facing
Speaker 12
17:26
the benefit cliffs and we got to make that more of a slope so that they're overcoming the fact that they those benefits taper off more quickly or they need training. They're not they're underemployed or and maybe dropped out of labor force because they can't make enough to justify child care costs or they don't have access to child care. So it's a matter of training, human services, and information asymmetry.
And some of it, information asymmetry is where people don't know how to articulate their skills in a way that will allow them to connect talent to opportunity. So I say that also as a plug for our new challenge that the application will go live tomorrow called Connecting Talent to Opportunity. and we're going to be working with states to scale or launch new talent marketplaces that essentially help people take what they
Speaker 10
18:15
know and match up directly with job descriptions that employers have available. And Arkansas is really primed up well to be competitive for that because
you do have the base of Arkansas launch that's going really well. So moving on a little bit here when we figure out people that want
Speaker 12
18:34
a job and we figure out whether they're marginally attached to the labor force or just discouraged
Speaker 10
18:40
or they really got a gap when we narrow that down that's about three percent of the population so when we're talking about just generally
Speaker 12
18:48
nationally about 37 percent of the population not in labor force when you discount all the retirements in school
Speaker 10
18:55
and all this stuff there's really about three to five percent it's our target population but that's a beautiful thing because if we got three percent more in the labor force we would be
Speaker 12
19:08
you know having almost 10 million more people in the labor force and working and just to put that into perspective our high water market labor force participation nationally was back at the year 2000, we were at 67%. We're at 62%. So even if we stretched it and we got 5% more in the labor
force, it's not undoable because if you think about it, our economy is not less dynamic than it was in the year 2000. It's a lot stronger. So that's over 10 million people that would be back in the labor force. That would help us to close the gap on a lot of the skilled trades where we've got five people retiring for every two people that are entering but to get to that point to where we are focusing in and really helping to not only get those people that are in that three to five percent of the shadow labor force into the system but you got to help them complete and persist and
actually know what happened and not just collect administrative data that goes into some black hole up here in dc and nobody sees it again or we maybe give you some report two years later that means nothing to you because all the people that are in the report are no longer in you know part of the equation
Speaker 10
20:21
so this is a logic model for how when you do have that integrated case management system at point one and we've got kind of the goldilocks goldilocks assessment of what you can do now what you want to do you know what
Speaker 12
20:35
what is the sort of level of skills that you can connect directly
with jobs that are available on two when you get to three you either get put in a job or a training program and at four we're making sure that you're ready to exit that training or become fully self-sufficient and and then the goal you know is that you
Speaker 10
20:57
exit with a credential and a job into unsubsidized employment so you're fully self-sufficient and this is a logic model that you
Speaker 12
21:05
know, should take advantage of not just WIOA, but its SNAP and TANF programs, you know,
and everybody that is eligible for work on SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid should be co-enrolled and take part of that same process, because that's where you're going to find the lion's share, that three to five percent of folks that are in your shadow labor force. They're probably on one of those three programs, but they're hung up in this poverty trap so that when they start transitioning, the money just doesn't work for them and so if you wanted to do some things quickly that would be in line with the direction we're heading into for 26 and 28 looking at administrative
costs you know states have different ways of looking at it from the most complicated and sophisticated it's also most effective like a random moment in time that utah does may not be ready for that, at least look at the cost per square foot for an employee. And what we found in Alabama is that we had some career centers to where it just, you know, you had too many people, too much space, and in the same local area, multiple different centers. So whatever that
looks like in a state, but generally speaking, you know, a good rule of thumb is for the admin costs to not be more than 20%. And also, you know, don't let career staff hide programmatic costs or administrative costs and program costs. If we're paying a bureaucrat's salary, that's overhead. That's not a program cost. Program costs, even if
Speaker 10
22:38
technically you can do that, what I think stakeholders and what governors and legislators and citizens want to know,
how much is actually going to the front line. If we think about this in military terms, who's in the rear with the gear versus the front line soldiers? And in this, we would think of the training and the money that's actually going to support citizens. That's the actual programmatic cost. Everything on
Speaker 12
23:03
the back end, that's support. But a lot of times in WIOA, those things get conflated. And part of it is because you're supposed to keep your
Speaker 10
23:13
actual admin costs under 10%. So they've got all these different levels of sophistry that can be employed to cover those
costs up. And, you know, it's not to say that you want to do something to get yourself hooked up with that 10%, but
Speaker 12
23:28
just being transparent with your boards to say somebody that's being paid to run a program is not actually part of the training. Also, you know, in the TEGLE that we put out in November through ETA, there's better options for the state to employ a state-level infrastructure funding agreement rather than each local area in the state having to negotiate to the
point of frustration to come up with a local mechanism. The governor could now employ a state funding mechanism so that you got one recipe for the stone soup so that in Little Rock versus Fayetteville you got the same level that adult ed and voc rehab and so on all contributes and that keeps it a lot easier for lay people and the few staff that are supporting the board to be focused on the important thing of training and policy and strategy rather than trying to be an accountant
coming up with this complicated IFA which largely ends up just getting recycled over and that's where we end up with a lot of the substantial overhead costs coming from, because who's got time to
Speaker 10
24:35
sit around and read a legalese and 150-page document when you shouldn't have to be involved with it to begin with? And then on your budget practices,
Speaker 12
24:45
I hit on some of this, but just making sure that the lay people on your board and the business people there understand transparently, what are we spending on staff? What are we spending on leases,
equipment, copiers, you know, materials, program expenses, training costs. In most places, and maybe y'all are an outlier, and I don't know, but in most, just about ubiquitously, a lot of these things get covered up by the program staff so that they're not transparent. And it's very hard for the local board or the state board to make decisions about what we need to cut what we need to add up if it's about as clear as mud and so just requiring that transparent
budgeting process and you may have to go back and and you know send that stake back 10 times before they get it to the right temperature and i would just stay on them
Speaker 10
25:38
until they make it transparent like you need it to be and same thing goes with you know systems integrated integration and data sharing. It's not just the
Speaker 12
25:48
one-stop, but y'all have got a great data system and a great CIO with Robert Magoo, and so are a lot further along, but you've got to have your administrative data from
those human service programs as well to get a full picture of what somebody's pathway to self-sufficiency is. That can be tough, but it can be done, and having a talent marketplace where people can individually advocate for themselves through open data, where they can curate a resume and directly match up with a virtual job description. That's going to really help people make that leap into the labor force and persist. Then there's a lot of underutilized programs that
are out there, like the Workforce Opportunity Tax Credit, the federal bonding program that sometimes is sort of ensconced in a state workforce agency. Just a few companies are using it. But, you know, workforce opportunity tax credit, anybody that basically is low income, the employer can get a tax credit for employing them for doing so. And federal bonding program, if let's say somebody's coming out of prison or justice involved, maybe the employer feels like
they're high risk they can be bonded for very cheap it's like a hundred bucks I think for several thousand dollars in bonding and this is widely underutilized and it's something that we can just elevate to our employers and make sure that they're able to take more advantage of it's not going to work for everybody but it's a good option for some and then particularly now that workforce Pell is coming out having a very clear process for calling balls and strikes on your ETPL
and other non-degree credentials making sure that we're looking at short-term credentials as a bundle or a wrapper for a set of competencies that's then connected to a job is key and so that we if we're training somebody with a welding program or a commercial truck driver program a CNA program we need to be able to take the course outcomes of that course if it's at a you know community college and then map that to the job and the credential so that somebody can do that that do
the validation at the individual level and also at the system level we've got to know the actual skills that are being trained that will also help you to make sure that we're not paying different amounts willy-nilly for the same program nursing is one where there could be a vast spectrum of cost associated with the program really for no need other than it's just that this provider gets away with charging more than the other one and career connected learning is really important will become even more important states that are not office of apprenticeship states or excuse me
state apprenticeship agencies that are using the federal OA now's a good time to you know take a look at whether you want to have more of a role in managing apprenticeship at your state level speaking for myself in the state of Alabama we were very pleased with the process we were able to make with expanding apprenticeship after we set up a state apprenticeship agency because we were kind of in control of our own destiny rather than using one federal office of apprenticeship official who was covering multiple states and kind of registering we had a apprenticeship program in
Birmingham, South Carolina, obviously, which doesn't exist, but they use these collective bargaining agreements and various contracts and multi-state employer things to juice up
Speaker 10
29:25
the data. So if you actually want to know what is going on in your state, having control of that yourself is a great way
Speaker 12
29:35
to do it. Also, you can put a better spectrum of work-based learning together that begins with job shadowing, internships, pre-apprenticeships, and that culminates in registered apprenticeship and other, you know, high-quality employer-based training programs
that maybe the employer chose not to register it, but it's still a really good high-quality program. Sectoral partnerships are a great way to end up with a system of actually making sure that it's employers and not just people like me sitting in a room saying, here's our list of in-demand jobs. But once you come up with a process, you know, what your criteria are, arranging employers and, you know, the best practice would be to have the governor or the legislature to appoint them
and have an iterative cycle of activities where they vet your regional and in-demand jobs. They look at your credentials of value criteria. And there's no better validation on whether a program is in demand than the fact that an employer is actually hiring people that has completed that program. And so their experience there is key. But it's also easy to waste their time and wear them out if we're just calling them in for a one-day rubber chicken dinner type thing and some consultant writes a report. So if you're going to convene them, you've got to do that in a
way that really takes advantage of their expertise and they see a clear value add. And there's nothing wrong with just calling out the bottom line. I mean, you're there to help save them time and money. And if we're not doing that, then we're really not connecting the way we should. And cross-training, I can't stress this enough that it's a best practice, particularly now, to get your WIOA Title I and III and anyone else that's in that career center cross-trained. And whether it's somebody that is being paid out of Wagner-Peyser or Dulled Ed or whatever the
partner is they ought to know how to do the intake process and arrive at the same outcome for anybody that walks in front of them and not just program specific because again going back to the beginning if I'm a citizen walking in and I don't you know I don't know whether I'm going to have something to eat tomorrow the last thing I want to know is somebody's alphabet soup for programs and have to go to be ferried around to multiple physical locations because this one group can't get me all the way there. And then there's nothing wrong with adding additional performance
and accountability metrics outside of the six core performance indicators. A lot of our federal performance indicators are the result of years of compromise, kicking the can down the road. Doesn't tell you much meaningful because we're talking about things like quarterly wages. Well, If you ask somebody how much they make, they're going to either tell you an hourly figure or an annual figure. I've never had anybody tell me how much they made in terms of quarterly wages.
And we also have an issue because the WIOA performance metrics are overengineered. We're 11 years removed from WIOA being passed and reauthorized, but it's still not fully implemented because the statistical adjustment model for measurable skill gain isn't statistically valid yet. And so, you know, if you really want to look at things that matter, you could look at increases in the labor force participation rate, cost for successful training,
looking at the number or the percentage of funds expended for job-related skills development, you know, retention with the same employer. So
Speaker 10
33:11
those are just things that you can do. Now, the feds won't let you hold your grantees
Speaker 12
33:18
accountable as far as sanctions for it. But let's be honest, I mean, nobody's really lost any money for failure to perform on WIOA at the federal level either. But at least it gives you the kind of bully pulpit and a little bit of naming and shaming that if you're not seeing any results, you've got these other measures to point to.
so just a couple more and we'll we'll conclude here is that you we really need to increase the training related employment rate nationally if we're only about half of the people that completed we owe a program or in a job for which they were trained that's not good i mean if that was a charity at the end of the year and it said well you know uh 10 cents on the dollar goes to actually saving the whales and so on you wouldn't give them any money and that's part of the problem congress has with WIOA is it's a low investment low outcome equilibrium trap so the the you know
a lot of states like Alabama like Arkansas have seen their title one allocation diminish but you know and the results are also bad too that's nationally not pointing finger at Arkansas or Alabama or anybody else it's just that there's nobody other than us through this partnership with DOL and y'all as state leaders who are going to make that change it largely won't be the the career staff at these agencies at the state or federal level. So we got to push it and make the point that we're either going to get these programs performing in the way they need to,
or Congress may just get rid of them. And that may be positive too, but the status quo is untenable. And so stronger connection between state agencies, that's where the legislature and the governor can come in. What I recognize both in the current role and when I was in the state is there's an A team of the people that have been appointed. They've got a short time horizon to get some big things done. Then there's the B team of I'm going to be here after you're gone. And so the motivation a lot of those folks is to just sort of hem all around, wait you out, slow things down, smile,
and act like we're moving, but you know, dilatory tactics. It's not always that way, but you've got to you know have a strong sense of when that's happening to sort of push it forward and messaging and just the EO or having a press conference that's not enough the only way it really happens is when you get tactical and you come up an operational plan with timelines and are really holding somebody accountable to be the quarterback it's not just somebody that goes out and attends events and cuts ribbons but somebody who knows the minutia of how to get these things done and
not only that, but knows who they may not have to be the one that does everything, but they're responsible for getting it done. And that person has to be held accountable. And they got to share the time horizon with the governor and the legislature, shared case management system. And a lot of these off the shelf solutions were built 25 years ago on a sort of waning tech stack and the people who operate these things have no incentive to modernize it. So it's a good time to I don't know who your case management provider is, and so I'll be careful, too, not to impugn anybody because they get mad about that, but just if it's not meeting your needs, it's probably because it's not designed to, and it probably won't because nationally these people know that in 10 years, AI and a lot of these alternative sort of customized off-the-shelf programs are going to upset the current market,
and they're just going to squeeze whatever juice is left in it. So I'll close with this, and this one I think is the most important, is ending unrestricted customer choice. WIOA in the public workforce system is about employment. There is consumer choice in the law, but there's deficit in growth-based thinking. A lot of times people that are operating the front line in the job center, they feel like, oh, well, if I give people too much information about
Speaker 10
37:23
their benefit cliff, they may decide not to go forward. Or if I don't let them choose, you know, the first job they walked in telling me they want to get into, they may just walk out.
Well, guess what? It's got to be informed customer choice. We want people to know what's your pathway to overcome benefit cliffs and what job or job should you choose based on your current skill set, what training may be available to fill that gap in. But there, you know, there's
Speaker 12
37:52
always been two ways to go in the world. people that thought you win by holding information back and people that think you win by adding more and i would say that when you look at the ledger usually people that err towards that growth base
rather than deficit-based mindset end up further along and have a longer track record of success you may be able to you know hold things back for a moment in time but that doesn't work long term because somebody else will be doing those things. So that's kind of where I'll turn it back over to you, Senator, and I'll just say we really look forward to Arkansas being one of those key partners with us. We know that Governor Huckabee Sanders, your legislature, have been leaders in this,
so I'm largely just recapitulating some things that y'all have already been doing. It's not the same in every state, and I don't just say that to patronize you. but y'all are much further along and certainly very closely aligned with the president and both secretary mcmahon and secretary of labor's vision for how we can improve the system and ultimately it's about getting more americans in the workforce so that we can maintain our economic competitive advantage and this is about national security you know the
people's republic of china is not slowing down and and they you know certainly if you've got a top-down communist state, you can do some things on the dime that we can't and don't want to do, but we cannot slow down on integrating our workforce and talent system, because if we do, there are those there that are waiting to take advantage of that and create problems for us. So this is important in many different ways, and would love now to have a conversation with you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:45
answer any questions. Thank you so very much, and I imagine we do have some questions in here. This has been very informative
Speaker 38
39:59
for all of us. Representative Beck, did you have a question? Yes, ma'am.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
40:06
Go ahead. All right. So, okay. Can you hear me? Okay, good. There's a few questions that I have, but I'll start out with one.
A lot of times when we get hung up on programs like this is you kind of hit two topics. One was flexibility and one was accountability for the programs, and those two are not opposite of each other, but they certainly aren't on the same end of the fields. You know, I mean, sometimes accountability reduces your flexibility and vice versa. So my question was this, there's some federal programs that have federal guidelines that we go by, and I understand that you're asking for a state plan here, but the guidelines
from the federal are so restrictive that we really can't incorporate accountability at the state level. It's more at the federal level, and then without accountability, we can't really guide the programs where we need. So I'd ask you to, can you embellish that
Speaker 12
41:06
just a little bit? Yes, sir. So tell me if I'm saying this back, but you're saying that basically the confluence of all the rules of the individual programs that you're getting from the feds make
it tough to add any additional level of accountability when you when you add those up and and i agree with you i mean that's a big problem that's a that's a different tactic that we're taking and
Speaker 10
41:32
that's why we put that flexibility memo out but i'll say this if y'all want
Speaker 12
41:36
to do something and it involves one of our programs and you face frustration we want to help you get the yes and give you a clear answer so my goal is to get to a yes or no and not to play a game of cat
and mouse where you got to deal with 10 lawyers from the department of labor and they'll give you some sort of coy answer and if it can't be done we'll just say well it can't be done for this reason, and here are the members of Congress to talk to you about it, but in most cases, if we can't get you all the way there, we'll at least make some progress towards it, and that's something that frustrated me at the state level, like when we set up a state apprenticeship agency, and we talked
Speaker 10
42:18
to these folks and said, what do I got to do X, Y, and Z to make it happen, and you got a
different answer from different people, so that's a huge problem that we want to lean into, not only with this modification process, but with the four-year plan. And we want states to think about, you know, levels of not just accountability, but new ways of thinking about program administration, you know, the actual way that you're implementing the program. So if you have faced that inertia before, I would just ask you to try
Speaker 44
42:48
again with us and see if you might not get a different answer. Thank you.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
42:55
Another question? The other thing is what I kept coming up in my mind was the role of post-secondary education versus the employers. I mean, obviously we want the employers there because they're the ones that are going to hire these individuals, eventually get them to a sustainable employment. So that's one aspect of it. But almost on the other side of that would be the employers sort of looking at people for the skills they need right now versus looking forward maybe to the AI initiative.
You know, what I'm saying is their guidelines, their employers might give us guidelines that are much meeting the needs of today versus meeting the needs of two or three years from now or five years from now.
Speaker 12
43:49
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the system we're talking about here ought to be about putting somebody in a job so that they can get a better job and then get a career. And so a lot of times there has been a confusion about trying to make the public workforce system just another education program.
WIOA is not the Pell Grant program. WIOA is not the student loan program. And, you know, for a long time, there's been institutions that have used WIOA as kind of a honeypot, and you just put all these different programs on the ETPL. So that's one thing you can do is just make sure that the programs that we're using for WIOA Title I are actually aligned to your list of in-demand jobs. And then beyond that, you can do more pay-for-performance contracts.
you could get an employer that's doing more of their own training and you know be partially reimbursed with that there's also more cohort level training that can be done so itas and these kind of ita vouchers are not the only way we can train people and there's a lot more that can be done to grade funding from things like the snap and uh training programs like snack pnt generates It's a 50% reimbursement for every SNAP eligible that's trained.
That could be used to endow the corpus of a fund that could, say, support child care, housing, and other things those people may need as they're coming off the program.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
45:23
Representative Ladyman. Thank you, Matt. Am I on here? Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, thank you
for presenting this. It's a lot of good information, a lot of it, it's above my head and I don't understand some of the programs you're talking about here, but you talked about being more efficient
in training centers, you know, maybe the output is not worth the effort, the money is put in, but when I think about that, you know, I think we talk about food deserts here in Arkansas I think probably Alabama may be similar to us but I think we have training deserts that's what I like to call it you know if we have Arkansas is very rural like Alabama is 75% of our cities have population less than 2,000 people so we have a lot of cities in the Delta and in South Arkansas that have
2,000 people they have no opportunities and they're 30 to 50 miles from a training center I think we need to take the training to them you know we need to have traveling teachers rather than traveling students because they may not have the ability to travel and I think there should be a program like that where we target because what comes first the jobs or the training so a factory you know I've been involved in siding factories so if you go into an area the trained people have to be there already or you won't go there so can we train
them before the jobs come there uh can you talk about that a little bit or is alabama doing anything like that in training deserts
Speaker 12
47:01
or anybody else yeah no it's it's rural so i'll begin by just directly answering the question i think one-stop centers are best when they are co-located where training happens whether that's on a high school community college campus but for most of these brick and mortar one-stop centers they mainly just operate like a dmv to where they're taking
somebody through an enrollment process they're not actually doing any of the training and that all happens at another site there is a lot more that we can do with integrating these in the community college and others but i think what you mentioned about you know virtual service delivery is important too uh or mobile sites i mean and that's one thing we invested in and and continue to do that and there's building up now of mobile career centers that also have career exploration through virtual reality integrated in there and you can share that between high
schools and adults and that really helps promote the two gen strategy so you can have career fairs job fair employers on site and talk about opportunities but that you know what you mentioned about trying to get that to folks that they're not having to travel 30 or
Speaker 10
48:14
40 miles because a lot of times it just won't happen i mean people until you get them there and get them hooked and connected with the
Speaker 12
48:21
why they're just not going to spend limited resources spending a little gas they've got to drive to some building they don't even know why they're going there so
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
48:31
that's that's a huge point do we have some few other questions oh representative bentley thank you mr moore for being here today it's really exciting to hear the things that are happening on the federal level to make us uh much more effective here in arkansas so am i hearing from you that we are going to be able to combine some of the uh some of these titles together and make the requirements the same if we come with a statewide waiver is that what i'm hearing from you that you guys are willing for us to work with some of those titles to make the requirements the same
so that people can get those benefits in a different manner
Speaker 10
49:10
than they are now. Basically, the ultimate goal, which has not happened yet because it takes Congress to act on this, is essentially
Speaker 12
49:17
block grant every one of these programs into one pot of money that we give to the governor who then works with y'all to determine what agency needs to hold it and what you're going to do with it. unfettered with all of the trappings of reporting and conditions until we get there we're going to
Speaker 10
49:36
think innovatively and so you know take a look at teagle training employment's guidance guidance letter 525 and that has a as a list of existing state waivers as well
Speaker 12
49:47
as some ideas of others you can take advantage of and not every one of them will work for every state but if you like i I mentioned to the other gentlemen earlier, if you've got an idea that's been untested, you know, pitch it at us. We want to look at it with you and try to get you there. But certainly streamlining some of the reporting and data collection, those are some things
Senator Jane English
Unverified
50:11
we're working through as well. Thank you. So if you're talking about rule changes, I think for so many of the programs and maybe what Mary's alluding to, but they have different requirements and different eligibility requirements. And I think sometimes that, for some of our social programs and also for our workforce programs. So are you really saying that we could apply for a waiver for some of these programs, for those eligibilities?
Speaker 10
50:46
waivers will help in some cases and two other things i'd recommend you doing is try to you know and this is not easy i'm well aware of that because i've faced it
Speaker 12
51:00
myself there's no reason to house all these programs and separate state agencies it's better off where they're under one cabinet secretary that that is on the same time horizon with the governor who can be held accountable with the governor to the people and the legislature and at the point of
intake and it can be done through technology and if you haven't talked with Robert Magoo yet he can he can explain to you about their integrated decision tree but even though some of these programs that different rules you can ask people a set of six to twelve common questions when they walk in the door and based on their responses you can determine which programs they can be co-enrolled in so that person doesn't have to fill out five different forms and and it just works based on the the technology and the algorithm that that is behind that and i know
Speaker 10
51:52
he's worked with google uh he's worked with you know the private sector to develop that and that that is a best practice so that if i'm you know joe smith and i walk in the career center i tell you where i currently work or if i'm not working with assistance i'm getting or not getting how many kids i have or don't have where i live what i want to do and based on those answers you tell me what i qualify for at that one point and so if you could do those things you know look at the waivers look at trying to integrate some of your state agencies where you can and then adopt
Speaker 12
52:25
that common intake process i think that's kind of the tripartite recipe for integrating the programs Thank you.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
52:33
I think that's kind of what we're looking at. So, Senator
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
52:39
Irvin. Thank you. It's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding if there were federal funds paid for a technology or creation of a system describing that in a different state, then we would be able to utilize that program. Do you know of a state that has done that using
federal dollars as it relates to workforce, and I'm thinking of the state of Mississippi because I know they've done a lot of work in this space with technology so that they can identify in real time online, you know, where people that have a certain skill set reside in an area. I'm fairly confident that's how they were able to win an automobile manufacturing facility into their state.
So are you aware of that system in Mississippi or any other states that have done that, number one? And number two, are you aware if they utilized any federal funding for that system? so
Speaker 12
53:52
on on the last part first you know it i think there's some nuance on that i just because somebody uses federal dollars for a project in their state doesn't necessarily make it like a
public utility that's just free use to the whole country um you know they certainly could offer it up to be used. Most instances, it's not always just going to be federal funds. Sometimes they're using state longitudinal data system or workforce data quality initiative funds, but in many cases, states are open to interoperating because there are political boundaries, commuting patterns that respect political boundaries. So you got people that
are living in one state and crossing over to work in another. I'll tell you what I would do, You know, and I know you, Robert, and the data office has done a lot of this. You need a state longitudinal data system to where you don't have to use fuzzy and bridge matching to where you can take student records, K-12 post-secondary, and then workforce records. Not so that you have some permanent record and, you know, this all becomes de-identified and anonymized.
but the sort of linchpin and all that is modernizing and updating your UI wage records and I know politically that can be tough because usually
Speaker 10
55:18
that NFIB affiliate you know gets upset with you and talks about what a burden that is on small businesses but there's a way to make it to where there's very little anything that the business has to do they're all using
Speaker 12
55:32
payroll vendors anyway all we want to do is add job location the name of the occupation down to a
six-digit zip code and the wage and that would give you enough information to mention what you said senator being able to get down and say okay we've got these needs these are how many people are in this area that are trained or on the pathway to being trained to fit that job and then you can start employing that for economic development purposes a lot of states are still using these proprietary, you know, Lightcast or Burning Glass Institute. Secondary LMI is not bad, but nothing is better than your primary LMI.
And it's basically impossible to get anything out of that until you can enhance your UI wage record because the competence interval in those matches is just too low
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
56:27
without it. Okay. Are you aware of the system that Mississippi developed
Speaker 12
56:32
with Mississippi State? yes we actually took Mississippi spark we went out there and took a look at that they still haven't enhanced their wage records in Mississippi as far as I know unless it's happened since I you know kind of quit paying so much attention to each individual state
legislative activity they may have but until they do that they're still going to have the same limitation even though they've got a education based longitudinal data system and they've got some of their human service system so they can generate a lot of good reports and get some of the outcomes but if you want to get to that level of economic modeling you're talking about the wage record still needs to be enhanced okay
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
57:15
okay so it's a good start but it needs to be built upon a good foundation that probably
just needs to then continue to be built upon
Speaker 32
57:25
Yes, ma'am. And I would argue that there's probably not much that Mississippi Spark can do that Robert
Speaker 12
57:31
currently can't do. He just needs those enhanced wage records. Well, I know that we had worked with this,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
57:36
Representative Deborah Ferguson and I had worked on this with our state agency here. So I know that they implemented a lot and looked through that. So I just wanted to get your take on it. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Representative Brown. Am I on?
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
57:58
Yes. Good. Thank you. Secretary Moore, thank you very much for this report and for being here today. You mentioned earlier something about the reticence maybe of some administrative type people not being very cooperative with the new theory and practice, like their theory doesn't help with the practice. And that has been my experience in another organization I was involved with.
So did you find that at times if you could not get these people to enthusiastically cross-train and share that information with the people they were over, did you have to move them to another department or ask them to find a new career? We did.
Speaker 12
58:55
had the flexibility like y'all are about to have in the next couple
months with the merit system flexibility, we would have taken everybody that works in the career centers outside of the merit system, put them on performance-based contracts, and they basically are, you know, eat with the kill and they get rewarded based on how effective they are. This sort of malicious compliance I think is endemic in most bureaucracies and it's just more acute in what we're talking about because bottom line is when there's that level
of information asymmetry, if past is prologue, the permanent bureaucracy sees a revolving door of political staff to come in. Most of the political staff really don't know what they're doing or don't have a full handle on the programs they're administering. So it's easy to kind of just mark time and you're not adding any new work to yourself. But who suffers out of that is, you know, the people that we're trying to serve. So I think it's critical for these decisions to be made not about the feelings of, you know, whether it's some high-ranking person in the governor's cabinet
or whether it's somebody working in a career center. You got to have a posture that's effective and that can only happen when you get the governor, the legislature, and the business community not only swimming in the same stream but actually making the tough decisions. It's easy to do the press release or the kind of messaging stuff or set up an office or something, but to go in there and really, you know, move stuff around and
Speaker 32
1:00:33
do what you got to do, that's tough. Those are the
thankless things but ultimately those are things that are going to make or break whether this sticks or not. Thank
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:00:48
you. Representative Beck. Thank you Madam Chair. Thanks Secretary Moore. I really like this program. I like the approach of it. You might be surprised to learn that this very committee has talked about some things that we're trying to do and they hit on some of your points. One of the One is this sort of, I'm going to call it a one, we call it a one-stop shop, right? You show up and you don't have to be an expert on the system as an individual.
We're going to, one person is going to get you to where you need to be and get you the help that you need, so that's very positive. But it's also positive, I think in another way, in holding administrative costs down, because so many times we get these individuals, the individual agency might be charging, you know, 10 or 15% administrative costs. But when you get four agencies doing that, before you know it, your money's gone, or at least a large portion of your money's gone. So I applaud those efforts.
The concern I have is that I think this program is gonna have to give the states a lot of flexibility. I like almost everything he said, except for one thing, he said there's one recipe for the stone soup. And I thought, well, you know, I don't know about that. There's going to be a lot of different people are going to approach them, a lot of different matters, so that recipe is going to change. But if we have the flexibility in our plan to do that, I think we can do that.
I, the point of my trying to needle out the flexibility is I think Arkansas is working, as you mentioned, we started working on a lot of this stuff. I think this committee has started already gathering data related to some of the things that you're asking us to do now. And I just want to make sure that there aren't any catches as far as don't do this as far as our state plan is concerned. And the reason for that is, you know, I've seen this where our program is put together
and we've got to go back and forth several times before we can get the federal and the state to agree in alignment. So I'm asking you, are there things that are just don't touch that type deals in any state plan that we would develop versus, you know, I think I got what you're wanting, but I'm asking you, are there any places where we
don't, any things we shouldn't be touching in the plan? Thank you. I don't think
Speaker 4
1:03:14
any area is out of bounds entirely, but I'll say if you look at that Tegel I referenced,
Speaker 12
1:03:20
525, it mentions the criteria in WIOA that the secretary just doesn't have the authority to waive.
A lot of that is on annual reporting requirements, on the eligibility categories, not so much on the policy stuff. and and and i'll clarify to say there's no national recipe for the stone soup what i meant by that is under current law let's say if you've got 10 local areas you know 10 regional boards every one of them are required to come up with their own recipe for stone soup without you and the governor being able to set one for the state and you may not want to you may as a state to say well we want every
local area to have to go through this process but if you wanted to under this waiver or you know under these flexibilities you and the governor can say you know we've been doing this long enough to know that adult ed ought to contribute 10 percent that we're going to make this it's sort of required square foot or per employee and then the local board rather than having to do all this accounting stuff spends more their time on the policy and the service provision but we're we at the federal level
Speaker 10
1:04:29
are not going to mandate that the state has one recipe for the stone suit, just giving
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:04:34
you the option. Thank you. Representative Garner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to ask a little bit more about some of the integration issues. And I agree with you. I love this. I love
this program. I love the flexibility. I love the accountability. I'm worried a little bit about, and I'm coming from a medical and um, nonprofit, uh, background. So I'm worried a little bit about where the client comes,
where, who's navigating the system for the client. If we can get all of this information, uh, integrated, then are you seeing the department of labor who, who is actually managing
Speaker 12
1:05:19
the client? The title one and three staff that are currently running your one-stop centers and so you know they just it's going to be a combination between the human element which is always key for somebody to be there one-on-one coaching but then also making the technology
system to where it's not just a guest game to where you're not just saying well this person looks like they'd be a good fit for this job and that's kind of how it happens if we're being too honest with ourselves now is that we get at some of these kind of my next move or that kind of thing career navigation thing and we just look and say well what do you want to do and we pop somebody into an ita or we just
Speaker 10
1:06:02
look at the jobs that are there so it's a little bit between the training the folks in the center and then again making them not be about one program about all the programs
Speaker 75
1:06:11
and then using the technology so that we're not having to do that in an analog process great thank Thank you very much. Yes,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:06:26
ma'am. Well, I see. Further questions? Mary, do you have anything? I just want to again thank you so much for giving us your time today. We're a committee that's knee-deep in making sure we get something good for workforce moving forward and get our workforce participation rate the highest we've ever had it. That's our goal here in this state, is to get some people that are trapped in poverty
out. And you've just given us great incentive here today. Glad to know that we have some partners at the federal level instead of those trying to put the brakes on what we're doing. So thank you again so much for your time. And the information you've given us today is very, very valuable. We'll definitely get back to you. Thank you so much for being with us today. Let's thank each
Speaker 14
1:07:00
of you, and thank you for your leadership and honor to partner with you. And,
Speaker 12
1:07:04
you know, President Trump wants us to feed the lead dogs, and y'all are certainly a lead dog. And so we want to do everything we can to support you and get you as far as long as we can.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:07:13
It's our plan to have something good. And it is a whole new way of thinking. But I think it's something that people have been, in their minds, have been thinking about for a long time or questioning why we aren't doing something different. So we're looking forward to working with you. We appreciate your spending the time with us. Thank you very much. And so far, we are, oh, we've got one other thing to take care of here.
We've got, thank you very much, Nick, appreciate it. Okay, let me see. We have our update of our reimbursement rates that we need to be presented. So, is somebody here from DHS? Oh, good, okay, thank you. If you'd come to the end of the table, appreciate it.
If you'd identify yourself, she'll be recognized.
Speaker 85
1:08:22
Good morning. Janet Mann, DHS Secretary. Good morning,
Speaker 86
1:08:27
Jay Hill, Director for Aging and Adult Behavioral Health Services
Speaker 85
1:08:33
with DHS. Thank you. Go ahead. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. Just a quick update. The letter is before you all that we are still working through the process. month's meeting, we had indicated that we had over 100 public comments. We have compiled those and have answered those, and they're on our public website. We have sent a recommendation to the governor's office to continue holding the current rate, excuse me. So that's what we're
waiting on to go through executive decision making before we will close that out. And then And also, I asked Director Hill to attend this morning also because it's January. So now we're starting our cost reporting process over again. And I didn't know if you would have any questions about that. Are there any questions?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:09:20
Just real quick on a question. What's our timeline? Look, you said we're doing through executive review. Can you give us a timeline on what that looks like, Secretary Mann?
Speaker 88
1:09:32
I can give you an estimated timeline. It always depends on the review process
Speaker 85
1:09:37
and the question and answers that we get back. Usually, it takes 30 to 60 days, depending on if they have any questions. Since we had over 100 public comments, we included those public comments with our package to the governor's office. So, I do anticipate questions.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:09:56
Thank you. Senator Urban. Thank you. Just a quick question. And the legislation
that was passed that requires this monthly verbal and written report, was it specific to this subcommittee or to public health committee?
Speaker 88
1:10:11
I believe it began as legislation to ALC and then was moved to this subcommittee. But I'm more than happy to go back and look at it because I
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:10:22
don't know definitively now that you ask. Okay. Yeah, no, if you don't mind. Yeah, I just
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:10:30
wanted to look at that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Are there any further questions? So thank you very much. So we are about to adjourn, but this afternoon at 1 o'clock, we have our report from our consulting company who did the audit of our programs here in the state.
And I think you're going to find that very interesting. So that's going to be at 1 o'clock over in the Big Mac building. So we are adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Update of Reimbursement Rates Under the Living Choices Assisted Waiver Pursuant to Act 213 of 2022, Section 15 [Exhibit B]
C. Presentation on Integrating the Public Workforce System [Exhibit C] [Attachment C] ̶ Nick Moore, Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education, U.S.
Department of Education
D. Discussion of Recommendations by Subcommittee
E. Other
F. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 4
Speaker 5
Speaker 10
Speaker 3
Speaker 12
Speaker 38
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 44
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Speaker 32
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 56
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 75
Speaker 14
Speaker 85
Speaker 86
Speaker 88