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By JULIE CARR SMYTH
AP Statehouse Correspondent
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Ohio is realigning three major state agencies in order to improve the way it matches businesses with workers and jobseekers with jobs.
Gov. Ted Strickland issued an executive order Thursday shuffling an array of state programs housed within the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio Department of Development and the Ohio Board of Regents so that programs better fit the goals and strengths of their host agencies.
The changes may be largely invisible to average Ohioans, but Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher says the administration is convinced the new arrangement will improve the state's economy by getting more residents into good jobs and providing better prepared workers to Ohio businesses.
"Despite a 5.3 percent unemployment rate, we still have (job) vacancies throughout the state," Fisher said in a conference call with reporters. "Not because there aren't jobs available, but because there aren't properly skilled workers to meet the needs."
The state Development Department, which Fisher oversees, will take the lead role awarding work force development, job training and business grants under the order -- becoming the umbrella agency for federal Workforce Investment Act programs.
Development will gain 29 employees and $34 million combined from the budget for Job and Family Services and the Board of Regents, which oversees public colleges and universities.
Helen Jones-Kelley, director of Job and Family Services, said the realignment will remove some programs from her mammoth agency that weren't related to its strengths, allowing it to focus more attention on social programs that emphasize job readiness, self-sufficiency and maintaining healthy families.
The third prong of the realignment is to move control of the Ohio Skills Bank created under Strickland from Job and Family Services to the Regents. Already, the regents have been given oversight of some adult education functions previously housed at the Ohio Department of Education.
Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut said the skills bank will fill a critical role for higher education leaders, allowing the agency to collect statewide employment data so that institutions can better tailor their course content and the majors they offer to the needs of businesses.
The Regents would add four employees under the arrangement.
Mar 27 20:04
By MEAD GRUVER
Associated Press Writer
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CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A booming energy industry has helped Wyoming's average income double over the past decade.
In 1996, the average Wyomingite earned $21,875 a year and the state ranked 33rd for average income. Last year, Wyoming's average income was $43,226 and the state ranked sixth, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis figures released this week.
No other state's personal income increased as much over the same period.
Wyoming is an anomaly in the region. The top five states for personal income in 2007 -- Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and Maryland -- are on the East Coast. Colorado, at 10th, is the only other Rocky Mountain state in the top 10.
To the north, Montana ranks 42nd. Idaho came in 44th and Utah 45th.
Wyoming has an abundance of entry-level jobs in the gas fields starting at $13-$14 an hour. That adds up to around $29,000 a year. But Wyoming's low unemployment rate of 2.7 percent means that workers often earn much more than that, according to Wenlin Liu, a state economist.
"Whenever they're short for a labor force, these people have a choice -- they can work more hours if they want," Liu said Thursday.
Liu said 12-hour days aren't uncommon in the gas patch.
Many of the workers come from outside Wyoming. Liu said that might have skewed Wyoming's average income up slightly. He said the Bureau of Economic Analysis divides total state personal income by the state's population while factoring out nonresident workers. But the Bureau based the number of nonresident workers on figures from the 2000 census.
"Today, we know for a fact we have many more out-of-state workers," Liu said.
Liu said wealthy people moving to Wyoming also have boosted average income. Pamela Flores, a sales consultant at Trailside Galleries in Jackson, said the town's wealthy population has insulated her business from economic troubles elsewhere.
"Jackson's been a reverse of the rest of the country," Flores said.
"The market is still strong for art," she added. "It's going to be here. Your wealthier people are going to buy art and they won't stop buying art."
Another reason why Wyoming's average income is rising, according to Liu, is people are waiting to retire. Liu said that in 2000, 60 percent of Wyoming residents ages 55-64 were still working. By 2006, that increased to 68 percent.
He said insufficient retirement savings and lack of health care options are likely discouraging Wyoming residents from retiring early.
Young people are boosting the average income by entering the work force early. The percentage of people 16-24 with jobs increased from 63 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2006, according to Liu.
Liu said the tight labor market offers plenty of work options for teenagers.
"If they want to work, they can easily find a job," he said.
Mar 27 22:47
By CATHERINE TSAI
Associated Press Writer
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DENVER (AP) -- A Colorado group promoting diversity is considering its options now that a measure to ban affirmative action in state government and education has been certified to appear on the November ballot.
Secretary of State Mike Coffman said this week the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, promoted by California businessman Ward Connerly, will appear on the ballot as Amendment 46.
The Colorado Unity Coalition, a 12-year-old group that has opposed anti-affirmative action proposals in Colorado, says people circulating the petitions collected signatures at Denver's Martin Luther King Jr. Day march and elsewhere, telling potential signers the measure would end discrimination but not always mentioning it would scrap some affirmative action provisions.
Connerly denied organizers did anything wrong.
Three people have filed complaints with Coffman's office over methods petitioners used to collect signatures. An administrative law judge will consider the complaints.
One was filed by Candace Frie, 61. She said she signed a petition outside a grocery store in Arvada when a man approached her saying the initiative would promote civil rights. It wasn't until later that she learned its true intent, she said.
"I don't normally sign those things, and I'm really kicking myself at this point," Frie said Thursday. "I'm just so mad, I'm furious. I'm angry at myself at being so foolish, and I'm mad they're misleading people."
The Colorado Unity Coalition is fielding complaints from others like Frie as it considers whether to file its own complaint with the secretary of state, offer an opposing ballot initiative or mount a legal challenge, said co-chair Bill Vandenberg.
"We are committed to making sure Colorado voters know about the deceptive tactics being employed by people to gut equal opportunity programs in our state," he said.
Connerly dismissed opponents' complaints as "baloney." People who signed had a responsibility to read the initiative before adding their signatures, he said.
"It's 37 words, very simple, very direct," he said.
Connerly said organizers turned in at least 50,000 more signatures than they needed, so if some who signed the petition didn't understand the initiative, plenty of others did.
"There's no validity to the argument that somehow we have been certified (to be on the ballot) because we turned in signatures of people who didn't understand what they were signing," he said.
A news release from initiative supporters said the proposal would make Colorado a place of equal opportunity for all, "not a state that uses preferential treatment as a tool to create 'diversity.' Achieving 'diversity' should never be an excuse to discriminate."
The proposal already has survived a challenge over its wording that was mounted before it was certified for the ballot.
The measure would allow exceptions when qualifications based on sex are "reasonably necessary" or to qualify for federal funding, and to preserve the validity of existing court orders or consent decrees.
Connerly, a former University of California regent, has helped pass similar proposals in California, Michigan and Washington State. He is backing efforts this year in Colorado, Arizona, Mississippi, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
University of Colorado student leaders have questioned how the initiative might affect admissions and efforts to bring more minorities on campus.
Vandenberg contends it could have "devastating impacts" to public education and to efforts to close the pay gap between men and women, and among races.
Mar 27 23:28
By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated Press Writer
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KIRKSVILLE, Mo. (AP) -- Affirmative action foe Ward Connerly on Thursday brought his long-running campaign to Truman State University, where an overflow crowd alternately mocked and cheered his efforts in support of a November ballot initiative that would ban consideration of race in public hiring and college admissions.
The former University of California regent told an audience of several hundred students, professors and community members that the country's nearly 50-year effort to atone for past racial discrimination has run its course.
"What we're doing in our nation now ... is preparing for the day when race-based affirmative action won't be around," he said. "Clearly, it's living on borrowed time."
Connerly was a driving force behind California's successful 1996 ballot initiative banning consideration of race and gender in public hiring, contracting and school admissions. Washington state voters passed a similar law in 1998, as did Michigan voters in 2006.
Missouri is one of five states Connerly and his supporters are targeting as part of a continued effort to strike down affirmative action laws. Ballot initiatives are also being organized in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Connerly, who on Wednesday traveled to Jefferson City to build support among lawmakers for what is known as the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, spoke for nearly two hours before a largely hostile audience that frequently jeered, interrupted and laughed at some of his more contentious statements.
He began his remarks by praising Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for his recent Philadelphia speech on race relations, calling it "one of the most serious and reflective speeches by any public figure in my lifetime about the issue of race."
But what little goodwill Connerly earned from opponents in the crowd for crediting Obama quickly dissipated as the speaker, who is black, laid out his reasons for opposing affirmative action.
He acknowledged that eliminating or reducing scholarships for underrepresented minorities "will probably have a negative effect. But that's a public policy decision that has to be made."
He defended -- and reiterated -- previous comments in a National Public Radio interview asserting that integrated schools have largely damaged public education within the black community.
"Integration ought to be secondary to quality of education," he said. "When we broke up black schools ... we started eroding the quality of education."
Connerly drew his biggest applause of the night after briefly losing his composure responding to an audience member's interruption.
"Lady, would you please just shut up?" he said.
Supporters of the Missouri ballot initiative have until May 4 to collect roughly 150,000 signatures from registered voters across the state. Tim Asher, a former admissions director at North Central Missouri College who is leading the ballot effort, said supporters "are on pace" to meet that goal.
Jasmine Pampkin, a sophomore accounting major from St. Louis, said Connerly's vision of a race-blind society is an ideal that doesn't match her own reality. Pampkin, who is black, receives a $500 scholarship each semester from a campus multicultural affairs office, as well as an academic scholarship to help defray the estimated $11,000 annual costs of tuition, room and board at the liberal arts school.
"I would love to be able to be looked at just for my academic achievements," she said after Connerly's speech. "But I don't feel it's an equal playing field."
Event organizers said they were pleased to bring Connerly to campus, even if his overall reception was less than warm.
"We want to open up dialogue," said Courtney Robbins, a junior political science major from Lee's Summit and chairwoman of the campus College Republicans.
"Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't end discrimination with more discrimination. The best way to end racism is to not look at color at all."
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On the Web: Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, www.missouricri.org
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