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Job retraining bill legislative success story

Probst legislation focuses on high-demand industries

By Kathie Durbin
Published: April 17, 2010, 12:00am

Pleasant surprises were scarce in the acrimonious final hours of the 2010 Legislature’s special session.

But state Rep. Tim Probst, D-Vancouver, got one when his “Opportunity Express” job retraining bill picked up momentum — and a six-fold increase in funding — before passing both the House and the Senate on bipartisan votes Monday.

House Bill 2630 was designed to address the state’s stubbornly high unemployment rate by refocusing existing job-training programs on high-demand industries that may actually be hiring sometime soon: high-tech manufacturing, health care, renewable energy, construction, aerospace and other “pockets of demand.”

The program will target unemployed workers in an effort to boost Washington’s economy.

“My constituents have told me repeatedly that if government wants to fund higher priorities, then it has to cut lower priorities,” Probst said. “The top priority this year was a strong economic recovery.”

Probst’s bill went through several versions. The initial bill would have provided small businesses with $98 million in tax credits against their unemployment insurance premiums to fund training programs for the unemployed. Federal money would have paid for the retraining.

That idea didn’t fly with business or labor, Probst said. “They didn’t like the funding mechanism. But the business community really got behind” the retraining concept itself, he said.

Then, in March, a revised bill passed the House with $3 million in state funding. That funding ballooned to $18.6 million during budget negotiations on the last day of the special session for reasons both policy-based and procedural.

“We needed to reach a compromise between the House and Senate budgets,” Probst said. “The Senate budget was structured differently for higher education in general. This was a third way.”

Still, Probst didn’t know the fate of his bill until the final hours of the session. “There was a week of holding your breath and crossing your fingers,” he said.

Opportunity Express is revenue-neutral because the money to fund it was transferred from the state construction budget.

Training funds will be distributed through the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, possibly beginning this fall.

Probst, a first-term legislator, has wielded influence on education and job training in part because of his professional background.

He is the chief executive officer of the Washington Workforce Association, a statewide organization that works closely with business groups, vocational education programs, labor unions and state agencies to align job training programs with the needs of a 21st century economy.

Kathie Durbin: 360-735-4523.

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