PEF peers into budget, page by page, department by department
Budget would weaken worker training, safety efforts
By SHERRY HALBROOK
The state Labor Department (DOL) would see many changes as the result of multiple transfers and mergers of services proposed in the 2005-06 Executive Budget.
Responsibility for vocational rehabilitation services to adults, currently provided by the Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities (VESID) program at the state Education Department, would be shifted to the state Labor Department effective October 1. The services for children would remain at SED.
This shift would transfer 750 of the approximately 1,000 VESID employees to DOL. And some of those moving to DOL would face a second transfer later to the state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, where they would administer the intensive phase of supported employment services for adults.
PEF opposes the transfer of these services from SED to DOL because they are primarily educational in nature. VESID’s services for adults are a continuation of the educational services it provides to children.
Most VESID employees are vocational rehabilitation counselors who have two major jobs — the counseling of clients in need of support and the planning and coordination of rehabilitation services to each client.
This is foreign territory for DOL, which has no voc rehab counselors and no experience in providing direct rehab counseling to individuals with disabilities. The closest thing at DOL now is the assessment of clients’ employment and training needs and referrals to training programs. DOL managers have been unable to provide any specific information on how they would implement the merger.
If the VESID adult services moved to DOL and OMRDD, as proposed, young adults with disabilities would have to navigate two new bureaucracies to receive services — a change that might violate federal law requiring voc rehab planning for students with disabilities to successfully transition the students from secondary education to post-secondary education or training.
This is far from the only major change DOL management will have to cope with if the Executive Budget proposals are enacted.
DOL would have to absorb the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) and its 1,539 employees, scrap the Hazard Abatement Board and merge several licensing and inspection programs within DOL into a new Worker Protection License Unit.
Meanwhile, DOL’s Welfare to Work Program would move to the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA).
PEF opposes all of these proposals.
KNOW THE FACTS — Download the VESID fact sheet at www.pef.org
Workers’ Comp Board
The WCB is working well, having made extraordinary improvements over the past seven years. It is processing claims faster and has cut into a backlog of unresolved claims, even though it is taking the time to hold formal hearings in more cases before resolving the claims.
In January, the governor congratulated the board for another year of excellence, saying the WCB has “set new standards of efficiency and has met or exceeded these standards in each of the past four years — delivering vital benefits to injured workers and their families faster than ever before.”
It seems unlikely that merging 1,539 WCB employees and their electronic data systems that are already working at maximum efficiency into an agency three times as big would improve either agency’s efficiency or effectiveness. And, although the budget calls for this change to take place April 1, neither agency has begun serious planning for it.
All of which begs the question, “Why change it now?”
Welfare to Work
Another apparently inexplicable proposal would transfer the Welfare to Work program from DOL to OTDA. The governor moved this program to DOL just a few years ago when it was rendered homeless by the break up of the state Department of Social Services.
Welfare to Work has found a home at DOL, so why does it and the clients it serves have to go through another disruptive dislocation? And the state could face a $360 million penalty if the move prevented it from meeting increased federal work-participation rates.
Hazard Abatement Board
The governor’s proposal to abolish the Hazard Abatement Board (HAB) would damage existing programs that have helped reduce accidents, injuries, and illnesses. Last year, the HAB awarded $5.5 million in hazard-abatement grants to 143 businesses and organizations in both the public and private sectors.
Eliminating the HAB appears to be part of a general move to shift DOL from regulating employers to “consulting” with them.
Worker Protection Licensing
The proposal to merge several of DOL’s licensing and inspection programs into a new Worker Protection License Unit appears to be motivated by that “business friendly” trend, since the state does not project any savings from this move.
In 1998-99, DOL conducted 66,510 safety inspections. Last year, that was down to 57,100. In the same time period, DOL cut its workplace inspections for Labor Law violations nearly in half, from 1,279 to just 694.
The merger seems likely to further erode DOL’s declining commitment to protecting workplace safety.
The
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