County’s scandal-plagued jobs program gets overhaul

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and her staff say the job of overhauling the county’s long-troubled employment-training program is in high gear — sorely needed as unemployment hovers at 8.7 percent in the Chicago area.

That includes a new name, “Cook County Works”; a plan to slash unnecessary administrative jobs that could save millions; and the improvement of outreach and job training for veterans and ex-offenders — part of the larger jobless population served by the program.

“This is something that we’ve done, but not in a targeted, focused way so we’re expanding that particular section,” Karin Norington-Reaves, director of the Cook County Works program, said of the focus on youth, veterans and ex-offenders.

She and Preckwinkle called a press conference Tuesday to talk about the program known formerly as the board President’s Office of Employment, or POET, a federally funded job-training program for residents in the south and western suburbs.

Historically, the county had staff that would serve as case managers for those seeking job training, but now they’re getting out of that business — sending that work to an outside agency.

That will clear the way for the county agency to serve strictly as an administrator of the $13.5 million in Workforce Investment Act dollars passed down from the federal government to the state and then to the county.

A new manager will be hired to audit the contract agencies and make sure they’re following state and federal guidelines.

Over the years the job-training program has been plagued with problems, from staffers sent to prison for on-the-job theft to accounting irregularities that led to the county returning $8.4 million between 2003 and 2008.