The U.S. Department of Transportation quietly killed an Obama Administration program that would have been the only federal level local hiring initiative.
"The Trump administration is abandoning another Obama-era regulatory initiative, killing a plan to allow cities to set aside work for local residents on federally funded public works projects," reports Tiffany Hsu.
"The provision, proposed in 2015, has been winding its way through the approvals process since then but never took effect," according to Hsu, so the potential of the program was never realized. The Transportation Department did not explain the decision to kill the program.
"The fate of a related pilot program, which gave case-by-case approval for local hiring provisions on selected transportation and construction projects, is [also] in doubt," according to Hsu.
For more on the demise of the federal government's local hire program, see also an article by Bill Raden for Capital & Main. According to Raden, the end of the local hire program was announced in the U.S. Department of Transportation's August Significant Rulemaking Report. Raden also quotes Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink, who gives this take on the Trump Administration's decision: "Many of these jobs were finally addressing long-term unemployment — many, for people of color [….]This is yet another example of the Trump administration not standing up for jobs for the nation’s most vulnerable.”
FULL STORY: Administration Scraps Local-Hiring Plan for Public Works
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