Training Sites May Lose City Funding

Officials are preparing to slash more than $6 million in annual funding to four Los Angeles job training centers, saying the centers failed a new certification process designed to improve service to both job seekers and the private sector.

The action was taken by a city oversight panel that says it wants to improve the private sector’s confidence in the quality of services offered by the training centers.

Two of the organizations--East Los Angeles’ CHARO Community Development Corp. and the Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment--have operated for decades and placed more clients in jobs than many of the centers that received certification, city data show.

All four groups are scheduled to appeal the matter Thursday to a Los Angeles city panel.

“I am so insulted that they would use a paper application process to weed us out of a system and totally ignore the 25 years of excellent track record we have,” said PACE President and Chief Executive Kerry Doi.

He and CHARO Executive Director Richard Amador say the process was vague and unfair, could jeopardize their existence and leave tens of thousands of their predominantly immigrant clientele without reliable service.

But officials with the city-appointed Workforce Investment Board, which oversees the federally mandated system of job centers, insist that all were treated equally and note that 12 managed to pass. The arduous process was critical to convince the private sector that the hodgepodge of nonprofit centers operates with consistent high standards and can churn out a trained work force.

“The business community in general is not aware of this training or has been skeptical of the system,” said Charlie Woo, a toy import company owner who chairs the WIB. “At the same time, we spend hundreds of millions of [public] dollars a year on it. The confidence of the private sector” is crucial.

The two-year effort to certify the Worksource Centers--previously known as One Stop Career Centers--stemmed from the federal Workforce Investment Act, a 1998 measure designed to place more emphasis on the private sector’s needs.

“With those changes came more heightened standards,” said Diana Peterson-More, who chairs the WIB’s certification committee. “We felt it was important to have a process that could really reward change and recognize performance.”

The federal law also gave local Workforce Investment Boards, made up of private-sector members, power equal to elected city governments. Under the old law, the council and mayor could override the private board.

Still, the plight of those organizations that stand to lose their funding probably will spark a showdown between the WIB and elected officials. The L.A. City Council today is expected to take up a motion by Councilman Nick Pacheco asking the WIB to grant CHARO a reprieve to meet the new standards. Pacheco said council members who represent the other organizations--PACE; Casa de Hermandad, which serves the Mar Vista area; and Advanced Computing Institute, which serves Koreatown and the Wilshire corridor--are considering joining the motion.

WIB members who volunteered their time as reviewers are opposing the effort as a throwback to the days when political patronage helped determine which organizations won contracts.

“This is right back to square one,” said Doris Bloch, who also served on the WIB’s predecessor, the Private Industry Council. Bloch recalled one instance in which the PIC tried to slash funding to a group with financial irregularities, but was overridden by the City Council.

“It wasn’t the only instance where the City Council said, ‘Too bad,’ or ‘Do it,’ she said.

Pacheco said CHARO should be granted a probationary period because it provides critical services and has performed well.

“We have community-based organizations that perform above what’s expected from them, and yet the WIB wouldn’t certify them because of methodology,” he said. “We need to understand how a high-performing organization can be criticized when they get such high results.”

The board in early 2000 opted for a certification process based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, created in 1988 in the name of the late secretary of Commerce. The award is granted to entities that meet elaborate criteria to ensure “continuous quality improvement.”

The award has become a forceful corporate marketing tool and has increasingly been sought by the public sector to overcome stereotypes of inefficient bureaucracy.

The criteria used to evaluate the organizations included factors such as leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, and “process management” consistent with the Baldridge process, but did not concentrate on the organizations’ track record of job placement, according to Lori Strumpf, the Washington, D.C.-based consultant hired by the WIB to carry out certification.

The organizations that failed to meet the standards scored low on categories such as “how center staff are included in the strategic planning process,” “how the organization measures the effectiveness of its leadership,” and “how customer flow has changed to ensure reduced and more accurate handoff between agencies,” according to appeal documents by CHARO and PACE.

The heads of both nonprofits say they worked hard to restructure their organizations and comply with the standards, but criticized them as vague and unrelated to performance.

Doi, who was recently trained as a Baldridge examiner, said that the applications were scored in an improper and inconsistent way, and that his organization’s strong performance in serving the community should have at least earned PACE a site visit from reviewers.

PACE outperformed all other city contractors in placements of welfare-to-work clients in the year ended in September, data show. CHARO outperformed all others with placements of dislocated workers and low-wage adults in eight months of 2000-2001, the most recent data available.

Doi and Amador said their organizations have undergone substantial restructuring as part of the certification process. But neither PACE nor CHARO scored high enough on their written applications to get a site visit. “If we were not performing, then there’s no question that we should be decertified, or not certified,” said Amador. “But we’re the best example of what the city had.... There’s no one else who could come in and substitute for us.”

The organizations that could not pass by Dec. 31 were informed that they would lose their city funding. That amounts to at least $1.6 million per year for each of the four rejected centers. Both Doi and Amador said the lack of certification could jeopardize millions of dollars in other state and federal contracts by damaging the nonprofits’ reputations.

In addition to work force services, CHARO offers entrepreneur training, computer classes, child care and loan-processing assistance. PACE is involved in affordable housing development, small business and youth services.

Strumpf said she “read every application and every piece of supplemental information” to ensure that volunteer reviewers were applying consistent standards.

The centers that didn’t pass may have had strong performance data, she said, but the certification system “focused on quality, not just numerical quotas and price tags.”

Strumpf and others said even though the centers will lose their funding if they lose their appeal, they can still apply for certification. If they pass, they can reapply for funding in coming years. But proposals have been received by the city from groups hoping to replace them, so they will likely lose clients to those groups.

There are eight Workforce Investment Boards in Los Angeles County--each appointed by local elected officials--but the Los Angeles Workforce Investment Area and corresponding board are the largest in the state and second largest in the nation.

Much of their mandate--to provide job services and training to everyone from youth and seniors to welfare recipients and connect businesses with workers--is carried out by the work force centers. In the city of L.A., $137 million was budgeted this fiscal year for the system of 15 One Stop centers and 10 smaller satellites.

All boards across the country are in the process of certifying the centers they oversee. Those nonprofit organizations are meant to provide one-stop shopping to clients.