New leadership at ODJFS hopes to still troubled waters

With the promise that no Ohio employment services office will be closed until a nearby one-stop center is up and running to provide residents with in-person job help, Jo Ann Davidson, former speaker of the Ohio House and now acting director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, has offered the first suggestion of hope to the troubled agency since the announcement last month that all employment offices were to be closed. That should be good news for area residents who worry that should their jobs be lost, they'll have no place to turn for help.
But Davidson, whose sterling reputation promises to return some of the luster to ODJFS, has a lot to do and a short time to do it. She has told Gov. Bob Taft that she would accept the interim appointment until May 1. That gives her barely six weeks to effect some major changes.
One-stop centers: However, the decision to make sure that the one-stop centers, of which there should be 89 in the state, will be operational before the job offices close is a step in the right direction.
Jacqueline Romer-Sensky, the former director who quit as the problems at ODJFS mounted and she received less than optimal support from the governor, made no mention of the one-stop centers when she announced last month that the 56 employment offices would be closed. In fact, the news release put out by her office said, "The 56 local unemployment offices across the state will gradually close, while the number of telephone registration centers will be expanded from seven to 21 over the next 15 months. Most of the staff from the local offices will move into the telephone registration centers."
In meeting with The Vindicator's editorial board Monday, Davidson did say that unemployment office personnel would have the opportunity to work at the one-stop centers -- sites where individuals can get information and assistance about jobs and job training and other programs for which they might be eligible. Considering the concern of those state employees -- the Ohio Civil Service Employee Association demonstrated in front of the state job office in Lisbon Monday to protest the closings -- the assurances that the workers will have jobs and job-seekers will be able to get face-to-face help is reassuring.
Management review: As well as naming Davidson to the director's position, Taft also appointed a management review team to conduct a targeted assessment of three of the worst areas within ODJFS: child support, the job matching computer systems and employment services.
If anyone can get to the bottom of the mess, Jim Conrad, the CEO and administrator of the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation who is leading the team, should be able to.
If Davidson and Conrad are successful -- and we have every reason to believe they will be -- Taft will have a huge monkey off his back. Poor mothers will get their child-support checks, and on time. New technology and consulting contracts will include performance standards that will be monitored by state employees -- not the vendors. And hopelessly jumbled computer systems will start to work the way they are supposed to.
It has taken years of mismanagement for ODJFS to get into its current fix, so all the problems can't be solved in six weeks. But we expect to see some big changes -- soon.