Won on federal WIOA risks and Mamdani $4.5M pilot overlap

Federal funding is another problem.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act has been reauthorized.

Rise and the federal budget for next year would fold workforce programs into a block grant and cut more than 1.2 billion from existing.

programs.

A lot of the city's trainings run on those federal dollars, so we want to know how much of the green training is in this plan and depend on federal dollars that now it's at risk and what is the administration's will for prioritizing to keep this money if it disappears.

Separately, the Mamdani administration just launched its own $4.5 million green workforce program as a pilot with the DOE with the DOE fund.

We don't object to the pilot, but we want to know how the pilot is going to be impacting the Green Economy Action Plan, because it sends a signal when a new administration launches its own green jobs program instead of funding the one already on the books.

We want to know whether the plan is being quietly shelved, and if not, we want to know who's making sure that these programs aren't tripping over each other, and how do they work in tandem with each other, and how are the responsibilities or portfolios divided up.

What we will be looking for today is evidence from EDC and New York City talent that the New Yorkers this plan was written for are actually getting trained and hired into good-paying jobs, stable green jobs.

Before we turn over to the administration, I'd like to thank and acknowledge the Workforce Development Committee staff, Senior Counsel Alex Polonov, Senior Policy Analyst William Hognick, and Financial Analyst Spencer Kuhn.

With that, I'll turn over to the Committee Council to administer the oath, and I also want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councilmember Caban and Councilmember Hanif.