Restore jobs program for low-income Ohio youths

Fresh from the “if-it-ain’t- broke, don’t-fit-it” realm of state government comes unsettling news that a highly successful summer jobs program for thousands of disadvantaged youths in Ohio faces a date with the chopping block.

As The Vindicator reported last week in a front-page story by staff writer Peter Milliken, the administration of Gov. John R. Kasich has decided to terminate a long-standing hands-on summer work program for low-income teenagers and replace it with a year-round largely instructional and mentoring set of services called the Comprehensive Case Management and Employment Program.

To be sure, state leaders merit commendation for constructing CCMEP as a vehicle to provide job-readiness skills and job-placement opportunities to position-deserving young people for long-term success. The program will provide case-management, training, job-skill acquisition and other services for desperate and struggling young people 12 months per year.

To fund that new $100 million initiative, however, Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services will funnel into it the complete $46 million it had used to finance the wage-subsidized 10-week in-the-field summer employment service.

As a result, the potential looms large for many idle and discouraged young people to remain unemployed and subject to the destructive consequences of crime, drug abuse and other social ills that idle time on mean city streets too often invites.

That’s why we are joining the growing chorus of local and state public officials, social-service advocates and job counselors throughout the state in urging the Kasich administration to reconsider its plans. The benefits of the summer-work program have proved themselves many times over, and its restoration would complement the aims and mission of CCMEP particularly well.

As Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors Association, put it, “We need to work with the state and find a way to do both.”

ITS VALUE IN MAHONING COUNTY

In Mahoning County alone, the summer jobs program has reaped tangible rewards. It has provided paid job experience – at a wage of $9 per hour on average – to more than 200 young county residents at worksites that include the Youngstown city street and parks departments and Mahoning County’s engineer’s and dog warden’s offices.

In addition to filling vitally needed community-service jobs such as grass-cutting and litter pickup, youthful participants in the program also acquire invaluable lifelong workplace skills.

Mahoning County Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti hit the nail on the head in summarizing the summer program’s hard-hitting positive impact.

“They can see how it is to go to work in the morning” and receive wages that help them pay for food, clothing and education, she said of youths in summer employment. “It changes their whole demeanor, and stimulates responsibility and positive thinking.”

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ARE BROKE

For those who think local governments should take over administration and funding of the valuable program, think again. With county budgets reeling from the loss of Local Government Funds from Columbus as well as massive Medicaid sales-tax cuts, trying to fund the same program locally would be virtually impossible.

Fortunately, word from Columbus is that state leaders might be having a change of heart. According to Bert Cene, director of the Workforce Development Board of Mahoning and Columbiana Counties, the state has begun to rethink the wisdom of the shutdown to determine whether both programs can co-exist.

What’s more, some JFS leaders across Ohio point to about $150 million in surplus welfare money, known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, that could be tapped to finance continuation of the summer jobs program. Short of that alternative, leaders could find ways to tweak the CEMEP so that it could incorporate both the holistic learning approach with a hands-on work unit during the summer months.

Regardless of how state and federal funding is realigned, rechanneled or reconfigured, this truism is undebatable: The summer jobs program is too valuable for Ohio to let die.