Cols Dispatch: State forfeits $525,000 for veterans; Ohio officials failed to staff program sufficiently to get federal funding

The Columbus Dispatch reports:

A state program intended to help disabled veterans re-enter the work force saw its funding slashed by more than $500,000 this year because state officials fell short of a federal requirement to hire and retain vocational counselors.

The U.S. Department of Labor cut funding for Ohio's Disabled Veterans Outreach Program by $525,000 in March, the culmination of months of warnings that state officials were jeopardizing their grant by understaffing the program. The grant was reduced from $6.2million to $5.7 million.

The reduction means that Ohio - which has the nation's sixth-largest population of veterans - will continue to shortchange veterans with disabilities who are trying to transition back into civilian life, according to Terry L. Janke, a state official who had administered the program.

Janke said he was demoted earlier this year for agitating the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to fill vacancies among the dozens of counselors who are supposed to help hard-to-hire veterans get jobs in the civilian workplace.

Agency spokesman Benjamin Johnson said Janke was demoted for other reasons, which he declined to specify. Johnson said the state has been working hard to recruit counselors for the disabled veterans program.

Janke was demoted and saw his pay cut from $40 an hour to $26 on March 26, three days after he sent a "report of wrongdoing" to his superiors and three weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor informed his bosses that they were cutting the state's grant. Up to that point, Janke had been receiving favorable performance reviews, documents in his personnel file show.

Janke says he was punished for pushing his superiors to fill as many as

13 vacancies among the 72 counselors who are supposed to help veterans find jobs. An Air Force veteran himself, Janke said current state leaders, including Gov. Ted Strickland, seem indifferent to his entreaties.

"I voted for Strickland, and one of the reasons was that I thought he was a veterans advocate," Janke said. "I have to say that since I moved into this program, I have to question that belief."

In January 2010, a human-resources administrator in the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services suggested that Strickland's priorities did not lie with the veterans program.

"The agency is following the governor's direction of providing benefits (unemployment compensation) to Ohioans, even if federal monies are sent back for other programs," wrote Penny Purviance, a longtime program administrator.

Johnson said the veterans program remains a priority for the administration.

"We're focused on bringing costs in line with revenues while at the same time providing the maximum level of service to the target population of disabled veterans," Johnson said.

Frank Williams, state adjutant of Disabled American Veterans of Ohio, said his organization has not received complaints from members about the Department of Job and Family Services program.

But documents released by the state under a public-records request show that Janke was not alone in his concern. His direct boss, Tom Hutter, noted in March 2009 that the state was at risk of losing grant money if it did not quickly hire counselors.

"The vet's grant is primarily a staffing grant so we are in dire need of filling these positions," Hutter wrote on March 10. "Time is of the essence for these hires."

It's not clear from records whether any of the hires actually happened, but in any case, the feds deemed the state out of compliance a year later.

Johnson said that conclusion was based on data from the summer and fall of 2009 and that the agency has since filled the vacancies. Johnson said he doesn't expect the state's grant to be reduced again.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor, Scott Allen, said state officials appear to be working diligently on restoring the program to full staffing levels.

"Strategies are being developed and researched to ensure a shorter turnaround on the filling of (disabled-veteran counselor) vacancies throughout Ohio," he said.

The Disabled Veterans Outreach Program has existed in Ohio in some form since the 1970s. It pairs eligible veterans with career counselors who assess their job skills, interests and barriers to employment and help them receive counseling and job-placement services. State officials said the program serves about 75,000 veterans a year.

As of 2008, the latest data available, 56 percent of disabled veterans in the program were able to find jobs and of those, 84 percent were able to keep them, according to documents released by the state. The veterans' average earnings were $18,615.

Those numbers are in line with the averages in other Midwestern states, according to federal data.

Janke maintains that the program has been hamstrung by an overly cumbersome hiring process and by neglect from top management at the Department of Job and Family Services and the governor's office. He said Strickland's priorities are misplaced if the governor is focusing on unemployment compensation to the detriment of helping disabled veterans find jobs.

"At the same time we are borrowing money from the federal government to pay (unemployment compensation) we are willing to send federal money back instead of using it to help people find work," Janke wrote in January.

"God help us if this ever gets to the media."

(Source: The Columbus Dispatch, 6/8/10)