For those of you who regularly read my blog, thank you for that. You have heard me regularly speak about the importance of WIA reauthorization and what should be in the new legislation.

As you may know, though, Congress earlier this year held several hearings in both the House and Senate on WIA, a promising series of events. It now looks like from all indications that nothing significant will happen with WIA, probably not until after the new year. The reality is that health care and other legislative priorities are taking up much of the legislative agenda for now, and it appears that it will be that way for the foreseeable future.

So, it begs to ask the following questions. Is all of this "worry" about a new WIA bill worth it? Will there be significant changes in the system or should we just keep the status quo and move forward? Let me opine on what my experience has shown.

As you probably know, the Workforce Investment Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1998. In 1999, I was elected vice-chair of the local workforce board in Northern Virginia; and in 2001, Governor Warner appointed me to the State Workforce Board of Virginia. Though both boards were very large at the time (and still are), it was the first time I could remember in our state that education, employers, government and economic development actually sat in a room and discussed state and local workforce needs. At the time, I was pretty impressed.

Over the course of time, like any pieces of legislation, WIA needed to be reauthorized in 2002-03 timeframe. As in many pieces of legislation, politics took over; and the bill has been delayed and delayed due to that reason. Now, everyone seems to be waiting for the current administration to come up with their priorities for WIA.

Many of us in the workforce training community (who have worked in the system) feel that this is our last best hope for awhile to get this legislation reauthorized and make the bill even better. Many states have used this legislation to overhaul their state workforce systems, one stop systems and state grant programs; specifically to better reflect the needs of employers. Many best practices have been shared with Congress, and we need to keep the pressure on them to move forward with reauthorization.

In my opinion, this would be the only federal legislation what would require all the relevant parties to convene at the state and local level to have a strategic discussion around workforce, education and training needs of employers and to give local areas resources above and beyond those in education alone to help meet those needs. I also believe that the one stop career system (some states systems are clearly better than others) will be a huge catalyst in getting unemployed Americans back to work. So, I say "let's go for it"; and get the bill we really want.

ASTD will continue to be in dialogue with policy makers at all levels to give its thoughts and feedback as the legislation makes its way through Congress. We will keep you posted on the policy section of the ASTD website; and, as always, will keep you updated in my blog postings. If you have your own thoughts about reauthorization, please share them here on this blog posting.