CIETC Scandal
What exactly is the Iowa Workforce Department and CIETC scandal?
Over the past couple of years top executives at IWD have been receiving salaries that are four times higher than other jobs comparable with the same position. The state may have funded over 1.8 million dollars to pay the yearly salaries of CIETC CEO Ramona Cunningham (368,000/year) and CIETC COO John Bargman (360,000/year). Jane Barto, former Workforce Development deputy director resigned from her position on April 5th. On April 6th Jane Barto was spotted at the CIETC offices at 4 A.M dumping and destroying documents. Dave Neil, the interim director as appointed by Governor Vilsack on April 5th told reporters that Laurie Rieck was the one who was dumping documents.
From KCCI, “Neil said that Rieck told her what she was doing and that she couldn’t
sleep the night before. He said that law enforcement officials have
since taken over the building. He said Rieck has been put on
administrative leave and was acting alone.”
Now Iowa Senator’s Mary Lundby and Pat Ward want to cut all funding to CIETC and the Iowa Workforce Department. [letter] Can I discuss this among us conservatives. Getting rid of all government agencies at this point is virtually impossible. There are actually programs out there that are beneficial for the prosperity of individuals who an uneducated and need a job. CIETC helps people find jobs, they call it “Welfare-to-Work.” Their goal is to take people off of the Welfare institution and get them to a place where they are providing for theirselves. Isn’t that a good thing?
1 Comments so far
1. Donald Hinkle wrote on April 18th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
I work with the program from IWD. I support the software they use to run the program. It is not called “Welfare to Work”. Thyey work with Youth, Adults, and Dislocated Workers. To qualify the participants may have to be low income but not necessarily. The Dislocated Workers is from Plant Closings who find themselves out of work after working for sometimes 10-20 years. Adults can receive core services with no eligibility requirements. What ever the case it is bettering the situation of Iowans whether it is a Dislocated Worker or a lower income individual, or an underemployer individual. The program has helped countless individuals and that includes myself. I was a dislocated Workder back in 1980 and was put thru school by CIETA the predessessor to JTPA which than became WIA. I graduated in 1982 and started working in private industry and than with the state in 1995. I was given the change in 1997 to choose my assignment in a series of linked projects we were working on and I jumped onm JTPA, it hadn’t been replaced by WIA yet. I owe my career to the Job Training Program and so does a lot of other people.