Greg Morris (NYC Employment and Training Coalition) on workforce providers and EDC president

Good afternoon, chairs.

My name is Greg Morris.

I'm the CEO of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition.

I do have some prepared remarks and recommendations as well.

I'll put those to the side and offer those to the chairs separately.

What I wanted to say at this point is my responsibility of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition

is to lead the coalition of providers and entities in New York City that are focused on workforce development.

And the green space is critically important to these providers.

220 folks within, 220 organizations within our network, serving as many as a couple hundred thousand New Yorkers.

And many of those providers have a hand in how it is that the city should be, could be,

and is thinking about the green economy.

I am very proud today to have invited a bunch of them to come to this space, and they're going to speak during the public session and tell their story as to what innovation looks like and what impact looks like and how it is that our

city can transform in all the right ways to be able to find success in facilitating access to green jobs.

And I look forward to them sharing their stories, and those are critical.

I just want to say a few things in relation to what we just heard.

I suspect if you did a hearing on health care initiatives related to jobs in New York City or the tech space career pathways,

a lot of what you just put forward in terms of your questions about how much is something costing and are we on track to meet the expectations that we set and how is it that communities are benefiting?

I suspect you'd have a difficult time getting answers to those two.

We in the workforce development space understand that our work is challenging and meets the needs of New Yorkers with the variety of challenges and vulnerabilities and pathways to success.

The complexity of not being able to say what our city budget is to solve that problem is tremendously impactful and puts us at a disadvantage to be able to ensure that we are making sure that folks work towards careers and opportunities that lead to good jobs.

Last but not least, I'll just reinforce the message that I've offered and will continue to offer.

And Chair Maloney, thank you for putting this forward.

We need to have a president of EDC in place to ensure that economic development and economic mobility is moving forward in New York City.

And again, Councilmember Wan, thank you very much for championing the Workforce Development Committee.

It's the first of its kind.

I know that has lots of opportunities and challenges associated with it.

This is the group that's ready to work with you to make that possible.

Council member doesn't have the same ring to it, nor does interim president.