Ohio gets new U.S. grants to assist laid-off workers

Federal aid will help retrain 700 workers losing jobs at a Chrysler plant in Twinsburg.

STAFF/WIRE REPORT

Cabinet secretaries traveled throughout Ohio to announce new federal grants as an analysis shows that the state is receiving average funding from the federal recovery act.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, were in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati on Wednesday as part of a group of Cabinet secretaries that were crisscrossing the Midwest.

Solis and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Avon Lake, announced $1.66 million in job training funds to help 700 workers who are losing their jobs at Chrysler’s stamping plant in Twinsburg. Brown also announced the release of $19.1 million in trade adjustment assistance for any worker in the state who has lost a job because of trade-related issues.

In addition, Jackson disclosed two grants totaling $6 million from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act that will pay for the retrofit of clean diesel engines in vehicles.

With the secretaries in their states, officials in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin hoped to convince them that they deserve a big chunk of $87 billion in discretionary federal recovery funds.

They haven’t done well at getting a larger-than-average share of the $116 billion disbursed so far under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of figures on the federal government’s official recovery Web site.

Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate. Ohio and Indiana are in the top 10.

But the formulas used by the recovery act usually don’t consider unemployment and layoffs, so these states aren’t getting anything extra for being hard-hit.

Auto recovery czar Ed Montgomery said the White House is stepping up the pace for getting funds to the auto states. Michigan learned last month it would be the biggest recipient of discretionary funds for redeveloping old industrial sites. On Tuesday, Ohio learned it would get $88 million to modernize the computers and software it uses to handle unemployment claims and Indiana learned it would get $8 million for clean water projects.

And the auto states have gotten a bigger share of recovery dollars that do take jobless rates into account, such as worker retraining funds and money for extended unemployment payments.

Still, those tend to be balanced out by areas where the auto states aren’t getting as much, leaving them with only average amounts from the recovery dollars distributed.

so far.

That has led some to criticize the four-day tour as just a feel-good attempt by the White House to control the bankruptcy backlash in areas that could be critical to Obama’s re-election chances in 2012.

A spokeswoman for Vice President Joe Biden, who’s overseeing the recovery efforts, defended the tour, saying the amount each state gets in both formula and discretionary funds is changing day by day.

“There have been a lot of discretionary funds that have gone specifically to auto communities ... that go above and beyond a lot of the formula funds,” said Elizabeth Oxhorn. “You may actually find that some of these auto states are actually ahead of the game.”