Two weeks ago, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), took a short break from the health care issue to discuss the publicly funded workforce system and the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization. It doesn't appear that the bill will be reauthorized anytime soon, but I am more hopeful now that I was before due to several reasons.

As most of you know, the WIA has been overdue for reauthorization for 5 years, all of it due to politics. The bill gets re-appropriated every year, so states and local boards still get their funds for training and other workforce related services. The issues are all around what I like to call the "rules" of WIA. What are the guidelines that will service the workforce system that will make the most sense? In most cases both sides agree on most items (sounds crazy but true). It's the "details" that seem to be the most contentious between the parties.

So, we go to last week's hearing. This was not the first hearing for the HELP committee on WIA, but it was the first public hearing for the new Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employment Training Administration, Jane Oates. Along with Oates was Undersecretary of Education, Martha Kanter, who also testified on WIA. For someone who has personally worked in the system for a long time, it was very interesting and satisfying to see education and labor discuss mutually agreed interest in WIA. Oates made the comment and pointed out that we (the federal government) require Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Education (mandatory WIA partners) to work together at the state and local level; and that we should also "up here" at the federal level work together for the betterment of the system, suggesting that her colleagues in Education and HHS should do the same as everyone else in the system. She offered to start those meetings at the federal level now.

She also stressed the points that most of everyone agrees on, that the sequential services mandates in WIA should be removed in the new bill and that youth services need more streamlining. I think you will hear more from her in the future as the bill moves through Congress.

The second panel to speak to the senate was another group of people who work in or have benefited from the resource allocated from the WIA system. I, along with others, are still hoping that both committees in Congress working on WIA will eventually talk about, and invite those to speak to, the "rules" of the WIA system. They shouldn't just talk to those who receive the resources and are happy about receiving those resources.

I am hoping that this bill will be reauthorized soon!