PROVIDENCE – Business and labor leaders are organizing a Statehouse rally Thursday to protest a pending $1 million cut to a popular jobs training fund.
Midyear changes to the fiscal 2010 budget to close a projected $219 million shortfall, passed separately by both the House and Senate earlier this month, removed the $1 million from the Job Development Fund overseen by the Governor’s Workforce Board.
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The board had been prepared to award grants last week to about 40 local businesses through its Comprehensive Worker Training program, but the announcements were abruptly suspended when legislative plans to remove money from the job training fund were released.
The matching grants of up to $50,000 each would be used to reduce the costs for companies to retrain existing employees rather than potentially laying them off.
Because of a dispute between the House and Senate over a plan to reamortize the state’s unfunded pension fund liabilities – a move that would reduce expenses now but cost more than $2.2 billion over 25 years – the supplemental budget has yet to be finalized, leaving the budget transfer from the Job Development Fund up in the air, too.
Karl Wadensten, owner of the Richmond-based industrial vibrator manufacturer VIBCO Inc. and a newly appointed member of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation board, has attempted to stir up the business community for a protest at 4 p.m. Thursday in the Statehouse rotunda.
“This is about the whole business community coming together, with one voice, to demand that the General Assembly stop its pattern of anti-business, anti-growth decision-making,” Wadensten said in a press release.
“The [Governor’s Workforce Board] training grants are exactly the right kind of investment to pull our economy back from the brink of disaster,” he added. “We need to help employers grow so we can get the 12.5 percent [who are unemployed] back to work and turn this thing around.”
A VIBCO spokeswoman said 150 to 200 businesspeople have already committed to attending Thursday. Wadensten said George Nee, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and another new EDC board member, was spreading the word about the rally among his members.
Larry Berman, spokesman for the House leadership, disagreed with Wadensten’s “anti-business” assessment.
Berman said legislators were faced with difficult choices in figuring out how to balance the budget, including reducing the Job Development Fund, which had already been cut by $1.5 million at the beginning of the fiscal year.
“They made those choices rather than raising taxes,” Berman said an e-mail Tuesday morning. “There are no state tax increases in the supplemental budget.”
The Job Development Fund is financed through a small portion of unemployment insurance tax assessed to Rhode Island companies.
Laura Hart, spokeswoman for the Governor’s Workforce Board, said the Comprehensive Worker Training grants may not be the only program affected. The board has said it also might have to curtail an adult education grant program that is also part of the Job Development Fund.
Tech Collective, a nonprofit alliance of local information-technology and biotech companies, issued its own “call to action” this week.
In a notice to alliance members, Kathie Shields, the group’s executive director, predicted funding of work force development grants to the collective for both the information technology and biotech sectors would be cut by 75 percent.
“Together, with other employers and business leaders, it is time to show a strong Rhode Island business Community that is ready to speak up and stand firm on an issue that will affect everyone across every single industry and party line,” Shields wrote.
Good for them! These business folks are members of our community as well. Keep in mind, if you are happy with not tax increases (and who’s not?!) we must accept these types of painful decisions as well. Let’s hope their voice is strong enough and helps this situation come to a solution.