Rules committee advances reauthorization to reestablish city workforce-alignment committee

The Rules Committee on Sept. 12 voted to send to the full Board an ordinance reauthorizing the Committee on City Workforce Alignment to coordinate workforce development across city departments.

President Shimon Walton and Joshua Arce of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development presented the measure, saying the committee will improve transparency and accountability and coordinate programs across 24 departments that invested about $143,000,000 in workforce development in fiscal year 2020–21. Arce told the committee the inventory includes 262 programs and 199 contracts and that one of the central challenges is deduplicating participant counts — he cited a figure of about 30,125 unique clients across departments.

Arce described proposed technical changes, including removing references to an outdated regional economic plan and extending the deadline for the first citywide workforce development plan to give departments more time to prepare. The ordinance also updates committee membership to add additional departments and public representatives, including seats reserved for service providers and labor.

Committee members discussed administrative changes — numbering seats to help clerks, attendance and resignation rules, and meeting cadence — and agreed those could be added as non-substantive technical amendments. The committee approved Walton's package of technical amendments and forwarded the item to the full board with a positive recommendation.

The full Board will take up the ordinance next Tuesday, Sept. 20, with the expectation that additional technical edits may be introduced at the floor.