Senator Alison Clarkson presented H.702, on behalf of the Senate Government Operations Committee, on the Senate floor Tuesday. She reported that the Committee supported the bill.

Representative Marcotte presented a high-level overview of H.707 for the Senate Economic Development Committee. He introduced himself and noted that he was Chair of both House Commerce and Economic Development as well as the SOCWED, a special committee designed to review how best to approach workforce development in Vermont.

Representative from the House Commerce Committee presented a revised version of H.707 on the House floor on Wednesday. The bill is an overhaul of Vermont’s workforce governance oversight which focused on workforce development, education, and training.  The recommendations made in the bill are a direct result of the creative of a task force in 2022 consisting of key players with the State workforce system and a workforce specialist consultant. 

Early in the week the Department of Labor (VDOL) presented numerous recommended changes to the language in H.707.  Most of the changes indicated that VDOL would like to see more discussion and significant review before moving forward.  The primary discussion is about the creation of a separate office reporting to the Governor rather than located within VDOL.  The Commissioner later in the week stated that the Governor is not interested in creating a new office.  There was discussion that with the right person in the job as Executive Director it might not matter where the position resided as long as the individual was capable of executing the job description as envisioned by the House Commerce Committee.

Legislative Council presented a new draft of H.707 on Wednesday for the House Commerce Committee to review. The new draft creates the office of the Executive Director of the Workforce Expansion, which consists of two employees - an Executive Director (under the Governor) and a support staff member. New language was also added to ensure that the Workforce Governance Task Force will study data management models and names the Executive Director as chair of the working group.

Legislative Counsel reviewed the changes made in H.707 for the House Commerce Committee. The bill makes a number of changes to Vermont’s workforce development system. Since they had reviewed the bill a few weeks ago, the overview focused only on the changes which reflected the Committee’s discussions and the thoughts of Chairman Marcotte.

Legislative Counsel presented an overview of a new strikeout to H.707 to the House Commerce Committee on Wednesday. The bill overhauls the governance of the states workforce development system. The primary change in the system is that the Commissioner of Labor will no longer be the leader of workforce development. The newly created Executive Director of Workforce Expansion and Development will now be the leader of workforce education and training in the state.