THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603300003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
In its fervor to shift to the states many of the duties assumed by the federal government, the Republican-controlled Congress is proposing that states administer the federally funded Senior Community Service Employment Program. This is a demonstrably bad idea propelled in part by Republicans' desire to punish the American Association of Retired People and other not-for-profit agencies that lobby Washington on behalf of the elderly.
The U.S. Department of Labor was assigned the chore of implementing the SCSEP portion (Title V) of the Older Americans Act, which dates from 1965. Unlike several other federal job-training initiatives of the '60s that cost much and produced little, SCSEP has succeeded beyond expectations in training poor, mainly low-skilled, Americans over age 55 for gainful employment and placing them in permanent jobs. It helps more than 100,000 Americans a year.
This success is attributable largely to the Labor Department's reliance on not-for-profit national contractors - notably, the American Association of Retired People but also the National Urban League and a half-dozen other organizations - to handle training and placement. A smaller portion of federal funding is funneled to the states, which then choose assorted governmental and private (including not-for-profit) agencies to train the elderly poor for permanent jobs.
The national contractors achieve better results than the states with the bucks they get. National contractors spent $3,837 per enrollee in 1994 while agencies funded through the states spent $4,482 - a difference of 15 percent. (In 1993, the spread was 15.9 percent).
The national contractors' rate of placement of trainees in jobs not subsidized by taxpayers is also better: 29.1 percent compared with 21.1 percent.
Guiding the over-55 poor into jobs is tough; the poor often are poor because they lack education and job skills. But working is better than not working and being a public burden.
Holding down counseling and job training costs is hard, too. But the national contractors do a better job than the states mainly because they operate with very lean staff.
For example, AARP's Hampton Roads Senior Community Service Employment Program is run by a project director, based in downtown Norfolk. Her skeleton staff consists of trainees working at minimum wage for no more than 25 hours per week. The 1995-96 budget for the region is $367,543.
The AARP SCSEP budget allows up to 92 people to be enrolled in the Hampton Roads program. Enrollees train at not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprises, such as DePaul Hospital, and at Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University and in various government offices. SCSEP pays them minimum wage while they train. Fifty enrollees gained permanent jobs last year - a placement rate of 54 percent.
Of the $396 million appropriated for SCSEP in 1995-96, $309 million went to national contractors ($48 million to AARP), $87 million to the states. There may be sound reasons to allocate some portion of SCSEP funds to the states (it assures competitive bidding among agencies for SCSEP funds and flexibility in distributing the funds), but the performance of the national contractors argues for continuing to send the lion's share of money to them. There's a genuine risk that taxpayers would get less bang for their buck if all funds were funneled to the states. SCSEP isn't broken. What could be the point of ``fixing'' it? MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB