COLUMBIANA COUNTY Officials to pull out of jobs program

Option Area 7 was created primarily to assist small Ohio counties.
THE VINDICATOR
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- Columbiana County commissioners hope bowing out of a state jobs partnership program will mean more funding to help the county's displaced workers find jobs.
At the recommendation of Raymond McAtee, executive director of the Mahoning Columbiana Training Association, commissioners voted Wednesday to withdraw from the Governor's Workforce Policy Investment Board's Ohio Option Area 7.
Commissioners said the change will take place in June 2004. Leaving the program won't change any operations of the county's employment and job training programs such as the One Stop center in Lisbon, they said.
The county already has a solid regional jobs partnership program in place, working with Mahoning County through the MCTA.
The state's creation of Ohio Option Area 7 came in 1999 on the heels of the U.S. Department of Labor's adoption of the Workforce Investment Act.
WIA provides money for job training to workers displaced from jobs because of an economic downturn by their companies.
Here was the idea
The idea behind the Option Area 7 was to group counties together in partnerships for job search and training programs. Commissioner Sean Logan said Option Area 7 was primarily to give small counties more clout in securing funding.
The Option Area 7 consisted at one time of nearly 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, including Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana, but about half that number remain.
Most larger counties in Ohio have opted out of the program, McAtee said. Trumbull commissioners have already voted to withdraw from the group and Mahoning commissioners are also considering the move, he said.
Trumbull, Columbiana or Mahoning counties may not receive funding through Option Area 7 because state officials consider the needs of all the counties in the program, McAtee said. Thus, if some counties still have money they haven't used, state officials looking at the Option Area 7 counties as a whole might not release more money to the remaining counties in the program, even though the money is needed, he explained.