Workforce development emerged Wednesday as a wobbly cornerstone of economic development legislation being negotiated between two key House and Senate committees.
A single bill encapsulates both committees’ visions for Vermont’s economy. S.220 contains provisions for entrepreneurial lending, access to credit for small businesses, energy costs for manufacturers, domestic export promotion, computer crimes, intellectual property, demographics and tourism, to name a few.
Gov. Peter Shumlin floated the $4.5 million “enterprise investment fund” on April 14. The money, from any revenue surpluses available in July, would be used to lure companies to maintain or create new operations in Vermont.
S.220 also would address workforce development. Lawmakers in both the House Commerce and Senate Economic Development committees agree workforce development is essential to Vermont’s prosperity — especially as they continue to hear from businesses who say they can’t find local workers for the positions they need to grow.
But the two groups propose very different strategies for reaching their workforce goals: The Senate has a hands-off approach, while the House is offering a detailed game plan.
“I think this may be one of the most contentious areas of disagreement between us in conference,” Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, told Rep. Bill Botzow, D-Bennington, on Wednesday. The exchange was utterly cordial, but the distinct philosophies at work in each chair’s committee were clear.
“I think it’s fair to say we all want a highly functional workforce development program,” Botzow said. “To me, it’s really important we get it right.”
Botzow was presenting the House Commerce Committee’s amendments to a Senate-passed omnibus bill for economic development. Botzow said he hopes the amendments will clear his chamber by the end of the month.
Their proposed changes more than double the Senate bill’s length, to 111 pages. More than a quarter of that content is workforce development — compared to roughly one page in the Senate version.
The different proportions reflect the committees’ divergent convictions about what the state’s workforce development system needs.
The Senate’s strategy is targeted in its aim, but general in its direction: Create a “workforce education and training leader” position in the Department of Labor, and put the new hire to work.
The House committee opted to insert comprehensive workforce development legislation from earlier in the session into the economic development bill, H.852.
“Workforce is as important as just about any economic development,” Botzow said. “Right now, we have workforce development programs all over the place, but we don’t have a system.”
A “workforce development working group” in 2013 found that inconsistent data collection across dozens of programs spanning several agencies rendered it virtually impossible to estimate the number of Vermonters served — much less the success rates of the services they received.
Among the additions to S.220 the House proposes, their amendment would streamline reporting to help remediate that analytical weakness. It also would reshape the state’s Workforce Development Council and change eligibility criteria for Workforce Education and Training Fund grants and the Vermont Training Program.
Mullin and Sen. Don Collins, D-Franklin, said the House committee’s amendments seemed to be a legislative attempt to control the actions of the executive branch. Mullin agreed “absolutely” with the premise that the state’s workforce development programs need better coordination.
“And we think the language we put in does that,” Mullin said in an interview after the committee meeting. “It creates the leader position and lays out the framework, without trying to micromanage every single detail.”
Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, chaired the summer workforce development work group. He described the Senate committee’s strategy as coming from 80,000 feet, and the House committee’s approach as operating at ground level.
“Maybe we’ll find another altitude that works for both parties,” he said.
<em>CORRECTION: This article was corrected at 9:59 a.m. on April 29, 2014. The original article incorrectly stated that H.852 did not meet the Crossover deadline. In fact, the deadline was met.</em>
