The 21st Century Workforce Development Fund (HB 4186, Senate Amendment 1) has cleared it’s first hurdle, passing out of the Senate Commerce Committee on April 30, 2009.  This bill will create a grantmaking fund that can be used flexibly by communities and businesses to train the most disadvantaged workers for jobs in “green” industries, and in industries experiencing a critical shortage of skilled workers.

The next step is to pass the bill out of the Senate before the third reading deadline of May 22, 2009.  Then it has one week to be passed by the House on a concurrence vote.  The bill was passed in the House, but it was amended significantly enough in the Senate that it requires the House to vote to concur on the amendment.

Your calls are needed to both House and Senate members to ask them to both support and co-sponsor this legislation. We are asking that moneys for the fund come from from both a 1% set aside in the capital bill for worker training, and federal recovery dollars that are targeted to training significantly disadvantaged workers in green industries.  This bill puts Illinois in a strong position to compete for those dollars.

For more information, stay tuned.  We will continue to update this page as the bill progresses.