Utah's workforce model is lifting scores of people out of poverty.

when I was uh serving as governor of Massachusetts senator Merkley State over there Markley State over there uh um I uh I would hear occasional some sto occasionally some stories that gave me some concern let's say that a a lumper in Massachusetts by the way you probably don't know what a lumper is but this is a person who unloads a fishing boat uh and works in a canning Factory a fishing factory and if this person lost their job because of over fishing or regulation or whatever I'm getting into that but if they lost their job they then were overwhelmed with the process of trying to get unemployment and maybe some housing vouchers and perhaps tanif and then they needed job training because those lumping jobs are not going to come back and uh and I looked at how many federal job training programs there were there were 49 at the time and and I would would hear that a person that had lost their job was overwhelmed with the complexity of getting help uh and uh I mean is that is that a real problem do people who who are are in one profession that maybe is going away and need help do they have a hard time figuring out how to access the various government programs that might be available available to them Dr BL Jones do you ever thought of that so usually what happens thank you for the question usually what happens is it's a rapid response team that goes out and they are notified at the state level uh when an employer is actually facing a layoff of individuals and so a rapid response team is sent out to that employer to talk to individuals about the resources that exist so it's at that time that they may learn about the different Federal services that you mentioned and so in theory it would be seamless and that that is the intention and then they go from there into uh what is referred to as American job centers that are Lo um located in most local communities again to be able to actually access but the job centers is not are not going to have tanif or housing vouchers or unemployment insurance right no they would have an individual you would talk to and they would have all of those Services there as considered a onetop center not not at the job center the One-Stop Center that's what I'm getting to which is a a governor smarter than me Mike levit of Utah had an idea which instead of having all these offices separate the job training and and the uh tanif and the housing and so forth let's have one office and let that one office help an individual that came out of became unemployed and that worked extremely well for the state of Utah uh that unfortunately is is prohibited under law at the federal level we can't put those offices together uh and only one state was grandfathered to allow that to occur and that was the state of Utah uh I have introduced a piece of legislation which is known as the one door to work act which would allow as many as five other states to be able to also do what Utah does which is have a One-Stop place where individuals can go to get uh help with uh unemployment housing tanif food stamps as well as job training uh Mr Dickerson you come from Louisiana Louisiana is one of the states said we would love to be able to do that uh and I'm delighted that for instance the ranking member and other members of this committee support this idea is that something which you believe would be helpful in your state yes sir that's the work of of our Louisiana Workforce and social service reform task force that was uh put together by the governor and and our secretary Workforce and Department of Child and Family Services as well and it it's two it's both sides of it it's not only for the employee but also for the employer but to your point you know one challenge that that we've heard in our conversations at the local level around the one door policy is to make sure that um those One-Stop centers are appropriately staffed to accommodate all of those services and that those staff members are educated so that when that individual does come in they not only get access to the services but the service delivery Mech mechanism is there to meet them uh and that's something we would support yeah excellent I I would just note one more thing which is that Governor levit um and and the Utah program assigns a casew worker as soon as someone becomes unemployed they get a casew worker begins helping them with everything from the support they need for uh for safety net services at the same time to lay out a plan for getting them back into the workforce and training it's an extraordinary program working well in the state of Utah and I'm delighted that the ranking member and others in this committee support this idea of letting at least five other states get the chance to try this on a temporary basis and see if it's working well for them I know Louisiana Texas other states have said please let us do this thank you so much Mr chairman