DP News

March 12, 2010

Workforce employees may lose their jobs

About 80 jobs at risk after state alleges correction plan had not been implemented.

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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DALLAS TWP. – About 80 employees and subcontractors in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties who retrain people who lost their jobs and help them find new ones could soon be out of jobs themselves.

Representatives of the Luzerne/Schuylkill Workforce Investment Board, which oversees certain job training/placement services in the counties, announced on Thursday that the board has advertised requests for proposals from agencies that provides these services.

The move was unusual, given that the same two agencies have been providing the services for the past few decades.

The Luzerne County Workforce Investment Development Agency (LCWIDA) has been providing services in Luzerne County for 38 years, and ReDCo – a private company – has been providing the services in Schuylkill County since 1981.

ReDCo has 33 employees providing the services, according to Sharon Angelo, ReDCo vice president for Workforce Development Services.

LCWIDA employs 33 to 35 union members and another 15 to 25 subcontractors, according to Richard Ammon, executive director of LCWIDA.

The decision to put contracts for these services up for grabs comes less than a month after a state official wrote to Luzerne County Commissioner Chairwoman Maryanne Petrilla stating that 13 problems with some record-keeping practices of LCWIDA discovered in a 2008 audit remain unresolved.

Christine Enright, director of the state Department of Labor’s Office of Budget, Labor, Education and Community Services, wrote in a Feb. 18 letter that Ammon responded to the audit in July 2009 with a corrective action plan to resolve the deficiencies.

However, field visits and interviews revealed that the corrective action plans had not been implemented, she wrote.

A subsequent review of the Luzerne/Schuylkill workforce investment system in December also noted the deficiencies.

WIB Chairwoman Martha Herron also announced that the WIB Executive Committee had an emergency meeting on Feb. 23 and hired Service Access and Management Inc. as a fiscal consultant to address the deficiencies identified in the audit and implement corrective actions.

WIB Executive Director Lucy Ann Vierling said the board’s response to the federal draft report and corrective action plan suggested by Service Access and Management was submitted to the Secretary of Labor on March 5.

During public comment at Thursday’s meeting, Ammon said Enright’s letter was “based upon phantom visits to our area” because he never met with anyone from her department or any state department who reviewed findings with him.

Ammon said the only corrective actions not implemented were those for which he was “awaiting technical assistance from the state.”

Ammon asked Vierling if she asked for technical assistance from the state since she became fiscal agent in November. Vierling said she had, but the state responded that the federal Department of Labor would provide technical assistance and has not provided any as of yet.

“I became the fiscal agent a few years ago. … It was dropped in my lap. I didn’t change any of the procedures or processes that were in place for the last 30 years that the state came in and monitored and approved. I didn’t change them,” Ammon said.

“But now the federal government comes in and says to the state ‘These things have to be corrected.’ And now all of a sudden, it’s falling in my lap, that I didn’t make changes, that I was hiding information,” Ammon said.

“It’s being painted a picture here that I did something wrong, and I did nothing wrong. Anyone here can look at my timesheets. … I gave everything I had into these programs. And now because the state failed to follow through on some things, it’s all coming down on me and ultimately our agency and our work? It’s not right,” he said.

Ammon said any mistakes made by Lawanda’s fiscal department were “honest mistakes that were approved year-in and year-out by the state. Now people come in and say they have to change … but when we need help, we don’t get help,” he said.

Ammon said he couldn’t get an answer when he asked who made the decision to request proposals for the agency services.

Herron said she would not comment on the request for proposals because “that would address the credibility of what we’re trying to do.”

Steve Mocarsky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7311.

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