Implementation

Employment. Key implementation strategies for job training policy:

• Use workforce intermediaries. Community-based organizations often excel at meeting the challenge of linking employers, lower-skilled workers, and educational institutions. States can enhance the use of intermediaries through direct or indirect funding support and through capacity building. These intermediaries can also be held accountable by assessing their performance in training workers, building partnerships with employers, and helping workers engage in long-term employment at higher wages.For more information, see Investing in Workforce Intermediaries .

• Align industry-focus on a regional basis with economic development strategies. Local economies do not typically align with state or county boundaries, so the administration of workforce development strategies must bring together stakeholders from within a region – defining region according to the operation of a local economy and not according to political jurisdictions. Furthermore, in order to maximize employment potential for a state's workforce, job training must be aligned not only with existing industries, but those with potential for growth, as defined through state economic development plans.  For guidance in this area, see The National Governors Association Workforce Academy Report and Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development.

Protection Against Predatory Financial Practices. Key implementation strategies for protection against predatory financial practices:

• Support monitoring and enforcement.   Effective restrictions on predatory financial practices are important, but only insofar as government overseers ensure that financial institutions comply.  For example, state can increase their regulation or licensing requirements in an effort to weed out unscrupulous lenders. Other states have increase consumer protection activities in an effort to respond to claims made by residents against predatory lenders. [i]

• Remove loopholes.   Some states have found that even after setting an appropriate rate caps on loans that loop holes inadvertently allow some lenders to avoid regulation.  State policymakers should look very carefully at any proposed exemptions to ensure that they do not allow lenders to avoid consumer protection efforts.

Tax Relief for Low-Wage Working Families. Key implementation strategies for protection against predatory financial practices:

• Piggy-back on federal law.   Most states with an EITC, Child Tax Credit or Child and Dependent Tax Credit set their state credits to equal a percentage of the federal credit, and align their eligibility levels as well.  This simplifies the administration of these tax provisions, and simplifies the process for claiming them

Targeted Benefits. Key implementation strategies for targeted income support benefits:

• Simplify application processes.  There is much states can do to improve program efficiency, enrollment, and client satisfaction.  Important program simplifications lessons were learned during the implementation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that can be applied more broadly, including [ii] :
  • Allow for participants to apply for multiple benefits using one form.
  • Disregard assets.
  • Eliminate face-to-face interviews.

Improving program simplification can happen for each individual benefit program as well as across program areas.

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[i] US General Accounting Office, 2004, “Consumer Protection: Federal and state agencies face challenges in combating predatory lending,” Washington, DC: US GAO.

[ii] Donna Cohen Ross and Ian T Hill, “Enrolling Eligible Children and Keeping Them Enrolled.” Future of Children: Health Insurance for Children, Vol. 13:1 (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, (2003).