"The decision came after weeks of heavy pressure from lawmakers from Montana to Kentucky, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)," Lisa Rein reports for The Washington Post. "The Forest Service had planned to begin layoffs of 1,110 employees by September, believed to be the largest number of cuts to the federal workforce in a decade."
The 25 Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers, which operate in rural areas, enroll more than 3,000 students a year, but the program was criticized for low performance, inefficiency, and high costs. Under the previous plan, the Labor Department would have taken control of the program, and planned to close nine centers and hand off 16 others to state governments or private companies. It would continue operating urban Job Corps programs, Rein reports. The nine centers slated for closure were in Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington state, and Wisconsin.
"But the planned closures quickly ran headlong into political reality: Most were in Republican strongholds President Trump won in 2016," Rein reports. "While the president and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill have put a high premium on downsizing the federal government, lawmakers facing reelection campaigns next year were loath to sacrifice economic drivers back home, however small."
from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2WWK1nH Bipartisan pressure forces White House to drop plans to revamp or shutter rural Job Corps centers - Entrepreneur Generations
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