Summer youth job programs have always had two main objectives: provide a work opportunity and earning opportunities for young people and young adults from low-income households.
Unfortunately, this year’s summer job program created by the City of Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Private Industry Council (IPIC) and paid for with federal stimulus money from the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) has a major flaw.
Some of those hired under the program will cause themselves or their households to lose some federally funded benefits like food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
And city and IPIC officials are doing nothing to stop this problem!
On WTLC-AM1310’s Afternoons with Amos two weeks ago, Deputy Mayor Nick Weber and IPIC Vice-President Gartha Ingram couldn’t answer a simple question of whether summer job applicants could have their household’s benefits or assistance reduced because of getting a job.
Since they didn’t seem to care, I did and began asking questions of my own.
FSSA spokesperson Marcus Barlow first told me that Federal regulations required TANF and other aid recipients to have their benefits reduced, if someone in their household was accepted into a summer jobs program.
Not believing that was a federal policy, I called Congressman Andre Carson. He got his staff working and talking with federal officials in Washington. They told the Congressman’s staff that federal regulations would not penalize those in the IPIC summer jobs program. The state, said the feds, could waive the rule.
I then talked again to FSSA’s Barlow. He checked and came back saying FSSA didn’t want a waiver because they were afraid of “lawsuits” for having one group getting summer jobs which didn’t affect their benefits while another group with summer jobs had been penalized.
House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Crawford heard about the controversy on our radio program and he also demanded an explanation from FSSA. So, FSSA changed their tune again, insisting now on federal waivers or a change in state law so summer job participants won’t have their other household’s benefits cut.
Missing in this discussion are those who created the program, IPIC and the city. They didn’t press the state or the feds on behalf of job participants. Instead, looking out for participants has been Congressman Carson, Representative Crawford, their staffs and me.
Anybody who’s ever created summer jobs programs would know about this problem and would’ve created a plan to mitigate it. But those creating this plan obviously didn’t do their homework.
Representative Crawford hopes to solve the problem with a sentence in the budget bill being crafted in the legislature’s overtime. But with Gov. Mitch Daniels’ driving the overtime budget train, there’s no guarantee Crawford’s language will get through the Governor’s budget switchblade.
How sad that some of the young people and young adults hired in a program designed to help folks in a recession, will be penalized because wet behind the ears officials in IPIC and the city weren’t sensitive or caring!
What I’m Hearing in the Streets
Mayor Greg Ballard briefed business and civic leaders at the Skyline Club last week on the Capital Improvement Board (CIB) crisis. The racial diversity at the meeting was poor, I hear, with only the Indianapolis Black Chamber of Commerce’s Tarae Dabney present.
(I’m told two other Black civic leaders were invited but didn’t attend: Indiana Black Expo head Tanya Bell and Indianapolis Urban League chief Joe Slash).
The meeting was supposedly private, but Mayor Ballard blabbed about it on his “Twitter” page.
Twitter is a social networking site, like MySpace, Facebook and Black Planet that allows public figures to communicate with the public. Mayor Ballard’s posting, called a “tweet,” on Thursday May 7 said, “Meeting with local business leaders and legislators today to discuss options to fix the CIB.”
After hearing about Ballard’s “tweet” from the pro-Democratic Indianapolis Times blog, I e-mailed Deputy Chief of Staff Robert Vane asking if the “tweet” was from the Mayor and if so, requested details on the meeting.
Vane confirmed the message was genuine but insisted the meeting was “private”.
The mayor of America’s 13th largest city, announces on Twitter and Facebook, I later learned, that he was meeting with folks about CIB, but insists that who attended the meeting he told cyberspace about could remain private.
I asked former Indianapolis Star columnist and reporter Ruth Holliday about this as she has her own blog (ruthholliday) and would understand the ethics of public officials disclosing public information on internet sites.
Holliday says the mayor’s Twitter tweet made that Skyline Club meeting “absolutely public.” Holliday says Mayor Ballard can’t publicly say something on a public Internet site and then say it’s not a public matter.
Like the mayor I’m a public figure. I know that anything I write or say that ends up in the Recorder or its Web site, or some other print, radio or TV outlet, or its Web site or anything I post under my name on an Internet site is public.
Somebody needs to explain that to the mayor. (And add that anything he sends on his taxpayer funded e-mail account is public record too).
The city tickets property owners whose grass and weeds are over 12 inches high. So I hope city Code Enforcement has busted Indy Parks and given them scads of tickets because many city parks are in deplorable condition with grass not being cut all year.
This weekend, I drove by three parks. Willard Park on east Washington and Tarkington Park near 40th and Meridian were in a deplorable condition with no sign of any lawn mower. Washington Park, one of the city’s key regional parks, looked ragged with many, many areas unmowed.
I hear one reason grass hasn’t been mowed is that some Indy Parks poobah mangled contracts for mowing contractors, severely delaying Indy Parks’ mowing season.
“I’m Brent Wake and I work for Sen. Evan Bayh.”
That was my introduction from Brent Wake, Sen. Bayh’s liaison to the state’s African-American community. Wake, an Indy native, contacted me regarding last week’s column expressing concern about a lack of Blacks in the senator’s local office.
Wake is based in Bayh’s Ft. Wayne office, but plans to move here soon. He added that of seven staffers in Bayh’s Indianapolis office two are African Americans.
See ‘ya next week!
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or by e-mail at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
