LEONARDTOWN — St. Mary’s County is now the third Southern Maryland county to hear the warning: a state study could end local control over the federal job-training money that runs the region’s American Job Centers in Waldorf and California, Md.
Ruth Davis, director of regional workforce and business development for the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland, briefed the Commissioners of St. Mary’s County on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Her news since earlier briefings in Calvert and Charles: the Maryland Department of Labor’s final request for proposals came out within the past two weeks, consultants are already looking at it, and it still asks the same blunt questions. Does Maryland need 13 local workforce areas? Does it need any?
For job seekers and employers in Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s, the answer decides who sets priorities for training dollars and whether the region keeps staffed job centers. In states that have already consolidated, Davis said, local boards and even the centers themselves have disappeared.
What the state is asking
The Southern Maryland Workforce Development Board, housed under the Tri-County Council, decides how federal workforce dollars are spent across the three counties. By law, at least 51% of its members are business owners or decision-makers, and county government, education and economic development also hold seats. It is one of 13 local workforce boards in Maryland.
In August, Maryland Labor circulated a draft RFP seeking a consultant to evaluate the state’s workforce system. Local areas, many of which share Southern Maryland’s view that a local voice matters, filed comments, Davis said. The final version did not change the core questions. It still contemplates keeping 13 areas, grouping them into larger regions or eliminating local areas altogether.
Davis listed the risks she sees: restructuring, loss of local control, a one-size-fits-all comparison and disruption in exchange for savings she said may be assumed rather than proven. The region is mostly rural and has its own industries and needs, she said, and has seen state funding formulas overlook smaller and rural areas before.
What happened elsewhere
Davis pointed to three states that have already gone down this road, as she described it:
- Arkansas has decided that, effective July 1, 2027, it will have no local workforce areas or boards. A single state board will control the funding and strategy, and the state will replace American Job Centers with kiosks.
- Oklahoma has also moved to one state board with no local areas.
- Kansas cut its local boards to five, then three, and is now considering one.
She also told commissioners she has heard the U.S. Department of Labor would like to see 25 states move to a single board. Asked how a business would find workers under a kiosk model, Davis said that is how it will work in Arkansas, and how it would work in Maryland remains to be seen.
Commissioners push back
Commissioner Mike Alderson Jr., who sits on the Tri-County Council, called the effort a “gigantic overreach” by the state. He said it would damage relationships the local workforce center has built in Southern Maryland and pointed to the job center in California and the region’s mobile job services vehicle as work the state would be pulling out from under the counties.
Commissioner Eric Colvin asked Davis for data the board could use to argue its case: how much money is at stake, how many people the program serves each year, how many jobs it fills and what the California job center means locally. Davis said she would send the figures that afternoon. The Chronicle previously reported the Southern Maryland board steers about $1 million a year in job funds.
Another commissioner raised concern about what restructuring could mean for the Maryland Apprenticeship Program and cited figures from a meeting with economic development officials and Maryland Labor Secretary Portia Wu: at least 9,872 national security jobs in the area with average pay of roughly $129,758. Those are jobs, the commissioner said, that Western Maryland counties such as Garrett and Allegany don’t have, an argument that Southern Maryland’s needs differ from the rest of the state’s rural areas.
The workforce question lands the same week St. Mary’s commissioners pushed back on state housing mandates, another fight they framed around local control.
Letters to the governor’s board
The response is being organized largely through the Maryland Workforce Association, the nonprofit made up of the state’s 13 local workforce directors, which met the morning of Oct. 27. Davis said the first step will be a letter signed by local workforce board chairs and sent to the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, the state-level board set up in law, rather than to Maryland Labor. A second letter will invite local elected officials who have an opinion to sign on and send their views to the governor.
Because the Tri-County Council includes the commissioners of all three counties along with the region’s state delegates and senators, those lawmakers are hearing about the review at the same time, commissioners noted. Davis said it will be on the agenda at the council’s next full board meeting.
Commissioners also asked how artificial intelligence could reshape the local workforce. Davis said the field is following it closely; the annual statewide conference of workforce professionals in Baltimore in September spent a full day on the topic.
