This week, the National Skills Coalition (NSC) released their highly anticipated “Realizing Innovation and Opportunity in WIOA” report to assist states and workforce stakeholders with implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).  While passage of WIOA largely maintains the basic local governance structure of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) through local and/or regional Workforce Investments Boards (WIB), the measure includes a number of policy changes that aim to strengthen local and regional economic development through targeted investments in regional industry and sector-based job training and education initiatives, and requires states to develop unified or combined state workforce development strategic plans.  

The NSC Report provides a series of recommendations to establish a vision for the state’s workforce system, and to develop a unified state strategic workforce development plan that includes various federal and state-funded workforce development programs.  These programs include those funded by state and local Workforce Investment Boards (WIB), labor, business, adult education, employment service, vocational rehabilitation, secondary and postsecondary education institutions, public and private training providers, community-based organizations, and other workforce development stakeholder groups.  The NSC report can be accessed here.

In July 2014, the President signed WIOA to reauthorize and modernize WIA, which had been up for reauthorization for more than a decade.  The WIOA represents more than a decade of negotiations between House and Senate leadership, culminating in a compromise agreement between the House-passed Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s Workforce Investment Act of 2013.

RCRC has long advocated for reauthorization of WIA.  Not only has WIA been critical to strengthening local, regional and state economies, but WIA investments in employment training programs and services, particularly for rural counties, are vital to developing the highly-skilled and technical workforce our businesses need to sustain, maintain and grow our competitive edge.  RCRC will work with our member-county WIBs and the California WIB to ensure that WIOA implementation maintains local WIBs and their governance structure, and supports rural employment and job training programs.