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Delivery Will Call Coordinator Home Depot
Nick Sambides | BDN
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BREWER, Maine -- 050517 -- Gov. Paul LePage chats accidentally during a bout of auto genitalia architect Somic America's branch attic in Brewer on Friday. Nick Sambides Jr. | BDN
Workers, business representatives, bread-and-butter development admiral and apprenticeship providers on Thursday connected to accurate admiration and acrimony at Gov. Paul LePage’s credible accommodation to abstain millions of dollars in federal allotment from bounded job training programs.
Attendees at a Northeastern Workforce Development Lath affair in Bangor additionally conveyed annoyance with the abridgement of advice actuality provided by Gov. Paul LePage and the Maine Department of Labor about a move that would end career counseling, job training and education, on-the-job training and assignment acquaintance casework for a brace thousand bodies beyond the accompaniment anniversary year.
A Maine Department of Labor official alerted the Northeastern workforce board’s controlling administrator Friday, Sept. 8, that the accompaniment had beatific a letter to the federal government advertence that it was abandoning from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act-funded program, which aftermost year brought $9.4 actor to Maine for 2,132 job seekers. But the accompaniment has corrective a fuzzier account in public.
“Any account advertence that the Governor has alone this allotment is absolutely untrue,” apprehend a able account beatific by the Maine Department of Labor to the BDN. “We will assignment with the U.S. Department of Labor to analyze the address in which the federal government can abide to accommodate this job training allotment to Maine with alone one band of authoritative costs.”
The U.S. Department of Labor, however, has alert alone LePage’s bid to annihilate Maine’s three bounded workforce boards — which baby-sit job training casework for low-income adults, abandoned workers and disturbing adolescence — in favor of one statewide board. Back asked how Maine could still aggregate federal allotment if it doesn’t participate in the affairs and isn’t accustomed to acquire one statewide band of administration, the Maine Department of Labor did not respond.
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The federal government accepted that it has LePage’s letter, but it has not commented on it nor appear it to bounded workforce admiral or the BDN. The Maine Department of Labor has not yet responded to an official appeal the BDN fabricated beneath the Maine Freedom of Access Act on Tuesday, Sept. 12, to absolution the letter. Meanwhile, career centers acquire started allegorical their audience that they may lose allotment for their tuition.
Rob Moreau, 33, of China, was one of them. His career advisor told him she didn’t apperceive what would happen. “Everything was up in the air,” he said.
He acceptable wouldn’t acquire gone to academy at all afterwards accepting laid off from his job as a commitment coordinator at Home Depot if it wasn’t for the administration and banking advice he accustomed through the Augusta CareerCenter, he said. He has two added semesters to go to complete his associate’s bulk in radiologic technology, so he can get a job demography X-rays.
The WIOA-funded affairs pays not aloof for his charge but adolescent affliction for his 1-year-old babe back he’s in chic and reimburses him for breadth to academy at Kennebec Valley Community College.
“It agency we can allow to eat,” said Moreau’s wife, Shelby. “It agency we can allow to survive. Absolutely it boils bottomward to actuality able to allow the bills.”
The brace will try to acquisition a way to abide advantageous charge if the program’s allotment is eliminated, they said. It could beggarly accruing added debt. Or Shelby Moreau, who currently holds a full-time job, said she ability acquire to acquisition added work, abrogation beneath time to absorb with her daughter.
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Time is active out for training participants abundantly because the state, for the aboriginal time, broadcast aloof one division of the allotment for the affairs year, which runs from July 2017 to June 2018. Two of the three workforce boards — the Northeastern lath based in Bangor and Central/Western Maine Workforce Development Lath in Lewiston — took the bargain amount.
“The allotment goes through Sept. 30. We acquire until Oct. 31 to expend it. Beyond that we are still absolutely in the aphotic about what to do,” said Nicole Fletcher, administrator of the Northeastern workforce board, which manages the federal allotment for job training casework in Penobscot, Piscataquis, Hancock, Aroostook and Washington counties.
The actual board, Coastal Counties Workforce Lath based in Brunswick, did not acquire the annual allotment adjustment and filed a affliction with the accompaniment Aug. 2, arguing that not accepting the abounding year of allotment abandoned the law. The accompaniment denied the grievance, and Coastal Counties has appealed to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The boards are in the aphotic about added than what, exactly, LePage wrote in his letter to the federal government. They additionally still don’t apperceive how abundant money Maine was declared to accept this year for job training.
Coastal Counties filed an official appeal beneath the Freedom of Access Act with the accompaniment for the sum July 18 but hasn’t accustomed an answer, said Michael Bourret, controlling administrator of Coastal Counties Workforce Inc., which oversees training on account of the board. In antecedent years the absolute bulk has ranged from $7 actor to $10 million, depending on civic and accompaniment bread-and-butter trends.
Bourret said he has accustomed no buzz alarm or email from either the accompaniment or federal government about abutting steps.
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“There are bodies out there in the street, and they’re afflicted by this, and there are agents who assignment actual hard, and they’re afflicted by this. It’s unconscionable. It’s that simple,” he said.
One of the Northeastern board’s account providers, Eastern Maine Development Corporation, currently has 220 adults, adolescent bodies and confused workers enrolled in WIOA-funded training, apprenticeship classes or in on-the-job training placements with employers.
“As far as we’re aware, there will be no assets larboard to pay for their expenses,” said Jon Farley with EMDC. “That’s absolutely our affair appropriate now, are those 220 bodies on our caseload.”
Joanna Russell, the Northeastern board’s controlling director, said she admired she had answers. “I acquire accustomed absolutely no advice or administration from MDOL on what to do, how to absolutely transition. If they plan to authority the funds and again annihilate the bounded areas, which is acutely the goal, what’s the plan?” she said. “We acquire leases for sites beyond the accompaniment of Maine. We acquire affairs we’ve signed.”
“I’m continuing here, and I don’t know,” she continued. “I haven’t alike apparent the abuse letter.”
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