Expand Economic Opportunity and Reduce Child Poverty

Implementation and Accountability

Job Training

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 , produced the Annie E. Casey and Ford Foundations.

• 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 .

• Set goals and evaluate outcomes. State policymakers can establish quantitative performance goals for the number of workers to be trained and employed, require state agencies to collaborate in tracking their own performance, hold agencies accountable for their performance, and can enhance support for those agencies that achieve positive outcomes. The federal government requires states to collect and report adult education data using the National Reporting System. States can go beyond these basic requirements. As part of it’s “Go Higher” campaign, Kentucky has set a goals for adult participation and achievements in adult education, and issues a regular report card to identify whether these goals were met.

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.

• Understand EITC error rates . Concern over fraud has plagued the EITC. Most of the errors associated with the EITC come from over-reporting the number of dependent children in the household. A study from the early 1990s indicated that the EITC error rates could be as high as 21%. However, later reviews of this research found it to be substantially flawed. For example, 40% of the taxpayers receiving a letter from the IRS indicating that they might not be in compliance with EITC tax code never responded to the IRS’s request for additional information. These taxpayers were automatically added to the error rate. [ii]

While concerns about errors shouldn’t be discounted, it is important to note that the EITC error rate is lower than errors in other areas of the tax code including self-employment and sole proprietorship tax filings. In 1997 and 2001 federal reforms were instituted—some of which specifically help the IRS track which households are claiming dependent children. After these reforms, the EITC error rate fell.

Work Support Benefits

Key implementation strategies for work support benefits:

• Conduct broader eligibility screening Either done the old fashioned way (pen and paper) or via computer, states are exploring ways to improve eligibility screening through enabling residents to apply for multiple programs via one application form. There are a wide range of electronic eligibility screening tools now available. States are exploring the use of these tools as a way to streamline application and improve eligibility processing. Resource: National League of Cities produced a report examining third-party benefits screening tools .

• 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 [iii] :

· 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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