SMART Holdings USA to research unskilled work for workers aged 50+ in the Vermont / US Job Market.
CareerAdvisor Clinician, Mark Renkert, the firm’s chair, will begin journalistically and clinically investigating recruitment processes, credit checks, background checks, health physicals, fitness testing, and aptitude testing of employers who hire unskilled labor aged-50+ paying in the range of $8.50 to $13.50 per hour.
Findings will be reported from a Social Constructionist perspective critical of the social sciences perspective in understanding the psychology of work (Chaves, A, Diemer, M., Blustein, D., Gallagher, L., DeVoy, J., Casares, M & Perry, J., 2004 “Conceptions of Work: Journal of Counseling Psychology.) Social Constructionist hold that many do not view work as a means of self-determination or self-concept implementation which contrasts sharply with prevailing work assumptions such as “Do what you love and the money will follow.”
Renkert will do this as an undercover hands-on worker participant much in…
SMART Holdings USA to research unskilled work for workers aged 50+ in the Vermont / US Job Market.
CareerAdvisor Clinician, Mark Renkert, the firm’s chair, will begin journalistically and clinically investigating recruitment processes, credit checks, background checks, health physicals, fitness testing, and aptitude testing of employers who hire unskilled labor aged-50+ paying in the range of $8.50 to $13.50 per hour.
Findings will be reported from a Social Constructionist perspective critical of the social sciences perspective in understanding the psychology of work (Chaves, A, Diemer, M., Blustein, D., Gallagher, L., DeVoy, J., Casares, M & Perry, J., 2004 “Conceptions of Work: Journal of Counseling Psychology.) Social Constructionist hold that many do not view work as a means of self-determination or self-concept implementation which contrasts sharply with prevailing work assumptions such as “Do what you love and the money will follow.”
Renkert will do this as an undercover hands-on worker participant much in the footsteps of Barbara Ehrenreich in her book “Nickel and Dimed and not Getting by in America” and Mother Jones Magazine’s Mac McClelland’s “I Worked As a Warehouse Wage Slave.”
Says the firm’s CEO, Michael J. Kipp, CPA, “Renkert will go through the entire hiring process and then proceed as a low-level worker and will be required to work for a period of time that depends on the work and will complete research on average Vermont workplaces.
Renkert will briefly describe the duties, interact and interview colleagues, and will focus on the employer mindset in selecting and interacting with these employers.
Renkert cites one employer who will be identified later who has a policy “If any worker addresses, converses, or engages the CEO of this sports apparel warehouser that person is terminated immediately. “What kind of person looks at their workers that way?, says Renkert who adds, “… it happens more than you think in Vermont.”
Renkert hopes the research sheds light on the use and practice and application of:
The process of being a Temp Agency day-worker
Online aptitude testing (4/2=)
Online veracity testing (T/ F – It is okay, if by accident, you bring home a pencil used at work and bring it back the next day?)
Health Physicals performed on workers by non-medical staff
Drug and Alcohol Testing
Random Urine Testing
Vague Employment Assessments by firms like Hireology
Physical Fitness Testing
Job Tryouts
Background Checks of Driving and Criminal Records
Background Checks on Credit Scores
Background Checks on Workplace Injury Investigations
Pre-work Clinical Assessments by Psychologists who have not disclosed who their fiduciary obligation is.
What the process is like for a 50+ year old worker
Says SMART Holdings USA’s Director of Education, Dr. Michael Olson, continuing, “Half in humor, providing Renkert survives the barrage of pre-employment testing, he will then engage in the actual process of work and report unique findings and it can be tough going especially with some jobs like refuse sorting, asbestos removal, warehouse order picking, Call Center Order Taking, Driver / Runner Jobs and any kind of manual labor in industrial environments.”
Readers will be able to follow the journey in a daily blog and the sum of research will be published.
Unlike the reality show “Dirtiest Jobs” Renkert hopes to reveal how hard life is for many Vermonters who take any work to make ends meet and what happens to them when they do.
SMART Holdings USA then hopes to present its findings to the Vermont Department and Labor to use as a tool in its efforts for workforce development.
The launch date for the project is Labor Day and is expected to last a year.
Today, November 17, 2014 Would Have Been Burlington Legal Icon Frank Petrosino’s 46th Birthday !
Legal legend and community icon Frank Petrosino leaves the legend of the Boa-conda in Mythical Journeys – Today in Eldyrwood is the 23rd Day of the Lightning Moon, 513rd Harvest A.L.
Frank was very active in fiction-theatre and was a driving force behind the explosive growth of live-action-role-play theatre. He was a writer, actor, director and creator. He is most famous for the the Boa-conda at 100-foot long land snake that has a reputation for being highly dangerous to other actors.
Frank was also an icon at the Burlington Toastmasters and played a driving force taking an ailing club and propelling it to the success it is today. Toastermasters nationwide are in mourning over Frank’s passing.
The formal obituary .
FRANK VINCENT PETROSINO III SOUTH BURLINGTON – Frank Vincent Petrosino III, 44, of South Burlington died at his home on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, following a long battle with ALS. He was born in Red Bank, N.J., on Nov. 17, 1968, the son of Frank V. Petrosino and Angela (Phillips) Petrosino. He was a graduate of Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., Boston University in Boston, and New England School of Law in Boston. On Sept. 23, 1995, he was married in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Middlebury to Heidi Smith. Frank was an attorney at Paul, Frank + Collins. He enjoyed sailing, skiing and live action role playing.
Holding a BS Business Management, and as former Principal of Northern Benefits, Ms. Brown joins SMART Holdings USA – SMARTvt.org applying her Subject Matter Expertise directly into Agency Building, Healthcare, Benefits / Compensation Program Design, Organizational Development Wage & Compensation Planning, Agency Valuation, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Information Exchange.
Ms. Smith joins SMART Holdings USA as a leading expert in optimizing business resources, agency capitalization, human capital maximization, and the new Healthcare Information Exchange. She shares an incredible success record in Sales Force Design, Development and Deployment. Says colleague Lisa Bodette, “Ms. Smith is the finest sales executive she’s ever known or read about.”
Ms. Smith is a top graduate of Leadership Champlain, has contributed to numerous workforce development boards, and has shows results as an Ambassador in Economic Development for the State of Vermont. Says Michael J. Kipp, CPA and CEO of SMART Holdings USA, “Smith’s financial acuity, planning insight and execution skills will have a profound affect in the organization’s ability to expand.”
Ms. Smith offers powerful contacts within the GBIC, Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Offices, and the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation.
Ms. Smith is also an expert in regulatory financial and insurance and HIPPA compliance.
Members of SMART Holdings USA are encouraged to offer personal greetings to Ms. Smith as she brings much weight and resource to our organization.
Joe DeGrella of Louisville trained as a cardiology technician but works at AutoZone. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When the financial crisis crippled the construction industry seven years ago, Joe DeGrella’s contracting company failed, leaving him looking for what he hoped would be the last job he would ever need.
He took each step in line with the advice of the federal government: He met with an unemployment counselor who provided him with a list of job titles the Labor Department determined to be in high demand, he picked from among colleges that offered government-certified job-training courses, and he received a federal retraining grant.
In 2009, Mr. DeGrella, began a course at Daymar College — a for-profit vocational institute in Louisville — to become a cardiology technician. Daymar officials told him he would have a well-paying job within weeks of graduation.
But after about two years of studying cardiovascular physiology and the mechanics of electrocardiograms, Mr. DeGrella, now 57, found himself jobless and $20,000 in debt. He moved into his sister’s basement and now works at an AutoZone.
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“I’ve worked my whole life,” said Joe DeGrella, who had hoped for a new start as a cardiology technician, but has yet to find a job in the field. “I’m just angry that I was trying to improve myself and my situation, and end up $20,000 in debt.” Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Millions of unemployed Americans like Mr. DeGrella have trained for new careers as part of the Workforce Investment Act, a $3.1 billion federal program that, in an unusual act of bipartisanship, was reauthorized by Congress last month with little public discussion about its effectiveness. Like Mr. DeGrella, many have not found the promised new career.
Instead, an extensive analysis of the program by The New York Times shows, many graduates wind up significantly worse off than when they started — mired in unemployment and debt from training for positions that do not exist, and they end up working elsewhere for minimum wage.
Split between federal and state governments — federal officials dispense the money and states license the training — the initiative lacks rigorous oversight by either. It includes institutions that require thousands of hours of instruction and charge more than the most elite private colleges. Some courses are offered at for-profit colleges that have committed fraud in their search for federal funding. This includes Corinthian Colleges Inc., which reached an agreement last month with the federal Education Department to shut down or sell many of its campuses.
The Times examination, based on state and federal documents, school and court records, and interviews, shows that some of the retraining institutions advertise graduation and job-placement rates that often do not hold up to scrutiny.
The idea of dividing responsibility between federal and state officials was to give local and state authorities more power in helping the unemployed in their areas. But the unemployed who sign up for training are often left to navigate a bureaucratic maze with almost no guidance. To avoid any appearance of favoritism, federal job counselors are not allowed to recommend schools to job seekers, leaving many of the unemployed to unwittingly select institutions that are expensive, have a history of legal trouble or are academically substandard.
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There is, for example, no mechanism for students to check in with counselors to gauge their progress or determine whether the training program is a good match. States say they investigate complaints and audit programs with poor outcomes, but students say they tend not to register formal complaints about a program’s quality.
When the newly unemployed seek government benefits, their skills and education are assessed at a federal employment office. If there are too few jobs in their current field, they are selected for retraining through the Workforce Investment Act. They choose from among dozens of professions, with each successful applicant receiving a stipend of up to $3,000 a year to pay for the training. The rest typically comes from federal grants and loans.
A divorced father of two, Mr. DeGrella said he was among many in the course at Daymar who were unable to find jobs and who now owe thousands of dollars. One classmate is $25,000 in debt and works at a McDonald’s. Daymar, which declined to comment, is being sued by Kentucky’s attorney general for misleading students.
“I’ve worked hard my whole life,” said Mr. DeGrella, who also once managed a manufacturing company. “I’m just angry that I was trying to improve myself and my situation, and end up $20,000 in debt.”
While government officials defend the retraining program as useful — and clearly it does lead some unemployed people to new careers — neither federal nor state agencies collect data on the number of people who finish job training or earn professional certificates. As a result, officials acknowledge that they are unable to determine how many students the program has helped find appropriate jobs during the past 15 years.
Carolyn Heinrich, director of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, has studied the training program extensively and considers it deficient.
“The jobs they are being trained for really aren’t better paying,” she said. “We have not used our work force investment system to help people make the choices they need to succeed. For some of the workers, we know what we’re doing for them isn’t working.”
The law was enacted in 1998 and expanded in 2009 as part of the federal economic stimulus package. As the economy has improved — which has led more of the long-term unemployed to try to re-enter the labor market — training and apprenticeships have become a central component of the Obama administration’s plan to match the unemployed with job openings. About 21 million jobless people entered retraining in 2012.
The training program offers courses at community colleges, vocational and business schools, and four-year universities where students can study everything from petroleum pump systems to makeup for the cinema.
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President Bill Clinton after signing the Workforce Investment Act in 1998. Credit Greg Gibson/Associated Press
Nolan King, 35, completed an 18-month respiratory therapy training program in 2011 at a Concorde Career College, a for-profit school, in Orange County, Calif. He said that he borrowed $42,000 for the course, and he has not been able to find a full-time job.
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Though his school claims a 95 percent job-placement rate within six months of graduation, Mr. King, who has sued Concorde, said only five of the 25 students in his class have found full-time jobs. A Concorde official did not dispute those figures.
Mr. King, who has a bachelor of arts degree from California State University, Fullerton, said he has so little money that he alternates the months in which he pays his two credit card bills and has delayed indefinitely a visit to the doctor to check a worrisome mole.
“I’ve applied for every job under the sun,” he said. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do. My wife, who works, expected not to have all the weight on her shoulders.”
The problem is also present at public institutions that offer federal job training.
At Florida Keys Community College, for instance, training for a two-year associate degree to get a job as a nursing assistant costs $10,958, compared with the $6,630 annual tuition at the University of Florida.
Students at Florida Keys default on their loans at a rate of 19.4 percent; at the University of Florida, the rate is 3 percent.
Juggling Cost-Effectiveness
The South Texas Vocational Technical Institute, which operates several campuses, is among a number of schools nationally that have been allowed to offer Workforce Investment Act courses despite having defrauded the federal government.
The school, which calls itself “a leader in the field of technical and vocational training,” has also failed to find jobs for as many as two-thirds of its students in some programs — many of whom have taken out thousands of dollars in loans to enroll, according to school records.
It trains medical and dental assistants, air-conditioning technicians, welders and automobile mechanics for between $18,000 and $25,000 a year.
During the past seven years, the institute’s former president has been sentenced to federal prison for defrauding the Department of Education; the Texas Workforce Commission has prevented it from offering some Workforce Investment Act training courses for failing to meet required graduation and job placement levels; and two of the institute’s employees, including the former admissions director, have been indicted on a charge of attempting to defraud the government of nearly $500,000 in student aid funds.
In January, the school’s parent company, ATI Enterprises Inc., filed for bankruptcy after having agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit for submitting false student financial aid claims.
The school’s new owners, STVT-AAI Education Inc., declined to comment, but in an August 2013 news release announcing its purchase of the schools, it lauded what it said was a reputation for excellence.
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Kamala Harris, the California attorney general, in October 2013 announced a lawsuit against the for-profit Corinthian Colleges. Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
But only 30 percent of those studying to be medical assistants at the South Texas institute graduate on time, and only 48 percent of those graduates find jobs, according to school documents — all while paying fees nearly three times the tuition of the University of Texas.
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Additionally, nearly 30 percent of the institute’s students default on their loans, according to Department of Education records, compared with about 5 percent at the University of Texas at Austin.
And though the institute’s medical assistant students borrow an average of $10,801, according to federal data, they can expect to earn as little as $10 an hour, according to local job listings — yielding an annual salary roughly equal to the poverty level for a three-person family.
“It’s a lot of money for a potentially low-paying job,” said Pat Hobbs, executive director of the Cameron County work force board, which manages Workforce Investment Act training programs. “But these are kids who are at home, and maybe no one is working. So they see light at the end of the tunnel, and figure any job is better than no job.”
South Texas Vocational Technical Institute’s campuses, located in one of the poorest areas of the nation, are made up nearly entirely of Latinos, two-thirds of whom are women. Cameron County, home of the Brownsville campus, has an annual per capita income of less than $11,000. About 40 percent of the work force lacks a high school diploma.
In May, one day after a Times reporter told state authorities that three of the institute’s programs had fallen below the state’s minimum 60 percent employment rate for graduates taking part in the training program, the Texas Workforce Commission sent the school a letter seeking corrective action.
Nonetheless, the commission said the school stands in good stead.
“There are no administrative actions that would affect the school’s licensing status with T.W.C. at this time,” Lisa J. Givens, a spokeswoman for the state commission, wrote in an email.
Assessing the Training
When Congress reauthorized the Workforce Investment Act last month, it did not address concerns about the cost of some of the schools, the level of debt students were left with or whether counselors should be allowed to offer more direct professional advice. In a nod to past criticism, however, the updated law does require states to better track former students to determine if training helped them find work with sustainable wages.
During interviews, Labor Department officials said the program works well. They said that assessing the quality of training is up to the states, and that the agency does not regulate tuitions and is unaware of concerns related to prices.
“If providers fail to meet the state’s requirements and job-placement policies, states have a process in place to revoke their eligibility,” Eric Seleznow, a deputy assistant secretary in the Labor Department, said in response to written questions.
While the Labor Department said four of five dislocated workers had found jobs after undergoing training, a spokesman acknowledged the figure does not distinguish between people who completed job training and those who quit.
In some states, data and academic studies have suggested that a vast majority of the unemployed may have found work without the help of the Workforce Investment Act.
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“I could live on $15 an hour because it is not that expensive to live here,” said Jarrod Howard of Atwater, Calif., who has been unemployed for two years, and recently finished a welding course. “But I’m trying to put away as much money as I can to retire. If I ever retire.” CreditJason Henry for The New York Times
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In South Carolina, for example, 75 percent of dislocated workers found jobs without training, compared with 77 percent who found jobs after entering the program, according to state figures.
A group of for-profit schools frequently at odds with regulators over the quality of their training and their costs charge some of the highest tuitions but place relatively few students in jobs.
One for-profit school, Corinthian Colleges Inc., based in California, is being sued by the attorneys general of California and Massachusetts, accused of violating securities and consumer protection laws and pressuring students into high-interest subprime loans. Corinthian agreed in July to have a federal monitor oversee its operations as it sells many of its campuses.
Kent Jenkins, a Corinthian spokesman, said its typical student is from a low-income family and has failed in previous attempts to earn a certificate or degree.
“We offer training in health care programs, where if you complete the training, the first job pays in the low- to mid-$20,000s a year,” he said. “That’s not a fortune. But it gets you out of unemployment, and gets you on a track for a career. It’s a good investment.”
A medical assistant course offered by Corinthian that costs $19,000 represents what Mr. Jenkins said was a “consequential amount, but not the proverbial mountains of debt.”
Job-training programs can cost more than $50,000 at Concorde, a competing group of for-profit schools based in Missouri that had its policies criticized by a United States Senate committee report in 2009.
Tim Foster, Concorde’s chief executive officer, insisted that the schools’ educational standards were worth the cost, but he acknowledged that Concorde had recently reduced prices to make up for fewer students enrolling.
At Daymar College, the for-profit school Mr. DeGrella attended, students pay $18,000 to earn a certificate in dental assisting, or $36,000 for an associate degree.
But more than one-third of those who earned the associate degree failed to find a job, despite taking out an average of $18,475 in loans, according to school data. In another Daymar training program — for billing and coding specialists, which also costs $36,000 — just 38 percent of graduates find jobs, according to the school’s accreditor, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. Daymar refused to comment, saying it had few students enrolled in Workforce Investment Act courses, but it declined a request to provide supporting data.
In the Central Valley of California, where unemployment hovers around 16 percent, the program needs more intense focus from the federal government, according to local officials.
At Central Valley Opportunity Center Inc. in Merced, Calif., of 34 people enrolled in a cooking course in 2012, only three found work, according to school data.
More than one-third of the students who graduated from the center’s welding course and more than two-thirds from its general business course earn less than $20,000 a year, according to school records.
Jarrod Howard, 45, who has been unemployed for two years, recently finished a welding course in nearby Modesto. He said that welders with his skills could earn $60 an hour, but that he would settle for $20 an hour if he were able to stay within 50 miles of the house he shares with his mother.
“I could live on $15 an hour because it is not that expensive to live here, but I’m trying to put away as much money as I can to retire,” he said. “If I ever retire.”
Who majored in Slovak language and literature? At least 14 IBM employees, according to LinkedIn.
Late last month LinkedIn unveiled a “field of study explorer.” Enter a field of study – even one as obscure in the U.S. as Slovak – and you’ll see which companies Slovak majors on LinkedIn work for, which fields they work in and where they went to college. You can also search by college, by industry and by location. You can winnow down, if you desire, to find the employee who majored in Slovak at the Open University and worked in Britain after graduation.
LinkedIn’s data set is incomplete, of course. You only see results for LinkedIn members. (It’s uncertain whether IBM truly employs more Slovak majors than any other company. Perhaps it just employs more Slovak majors with LinkedIn profiles.) Nonetheless, LinkedIn’s service fills a need for prospective students and their parents, says Jeff Schiffman, Tulane University’s senior associate director of admission. The prospective student who wants to major in, say, studio art at Tulane can see what career paths similar-minded alumni have taken.
“They’re not necessarily looking for a point of contact, because they’re 17,” Schiffman said. “But they just want to know that the possibility is there. They want to see a success story.”
Such services may have particular value for students trying to convince parents that majoring in a liberal arts field does not doom one to a lifetime of work as a barista. A search for English majors, for instance, turns up many well-employed people, filling the ranks of such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Microsoft.
LinkedIn is one of several players in a growing market: the business of aggregating data about career outcomes for prospective college students. Rankings still dominate conversations about which colleges are best, to the chagrin of many college presidents. But a number of companies are developing data-backed search tools to help students decide where to apply, where to attend and what to study.
Students and parents are the consumers most of these companies have in mind. But the services also attract business from colleges and universities that the aggregated data depicts favorably. Tulane now features its LinkedIn page in its promotional materials, Schiffman said.
The aftershocks of the financial crisis, coupled with climbing college costs, have left many prospective students uneasy about college – and their parents even more so. “In 20 years of being involved in the pre-college and college arena, I’ve never seen more parents focused on ROI [return on investment],” said Pat O’Brien, the author of Making College Count.
Eager to make sure college is “a good investment,” parents and students are “desperate for information,” O’Brien said. But they don’t know where to go. “To a large extent they default to college rankings,” he said. “While people in the college world are fed up with rankings, I don’t think the general consumer understands that or feels that way. [Rankings are] the only go-to.”
Rankings, however, have their limitations. “Stanford’s not the best school for everybody,” said Jillian Youngblood, director of community relations for Noodle.com, an education search engine that draws on federal data, student reviews and college rankings to provide guidance for prospective students. John Katzman, the creator of the Princeton Review, founded Noodle in 2010.
Noodle, Youngblood said, aims to be “the most comprehensive search engine for education at every level” – from preschool to graduate school. The site, which launched a revamped set of services last week, pools data from across the web to provide a wide-ranging glimpse of institutions. Search for Harvard, for instance, and you’ll see not only its graduation rates and financial aid breakdown, but also a Q&A section, a listing of how the institution fares on various rankings, and advice from the site’s community of “experts,” many of whom are freelance writers, admissions counselors or Noodle employees.
“The internet’s really bad at helping you make decisions about your education … there’s great advice all over the internet, [but] you have to track it down,” Youngblood said. “If I want to book a hotel in Bangkok, I’m going to go to TripAdvisor. But there are people who actually do Google, ‘What’s the best place to get a nursing degree?’”
Those hapless education-seekers typically get fed into lead-generation sites, from which colleges buy student data, she said.
“You put in your information … [and] no one is guiding you,” Youngblood said. “You get a list of maybe six nursing schools. They’re probably all for-profits; they’re probably all terrible. And if you’re low-information enough to start your search that way, there’s a good chance you’re going to get fed into one of these crappy colleges.”
Noodle.com compiles existing data. LinkedIn, on the other hand, has long asked users for their education history and employment information – unintentionally developing a career-outcomes database in the process.
Burning Glass, a Boston-based labor analytics firm, is another player in the market. The company parses tens of millions of resumes and online job listings using statistical language processing technology. The text-mining algorithms help determine where jobs are oversupplied and where they are undersupplied. For example, the company has seen an increased demand for positions with the word “analyst” in the title, Matthew Sigelman, the firm’s chief executive, toldThe New England Journal of Higher Education. (The development reflects the increasing popularity of analytics – a shift not confined to the college-prep industry.)
“If institutions are offering programs in areas that do not align with demand in the job market, graduates will have difficulty finding jobs,” Sigelman told the journal. “Conversely, there are ways to identify new job market opportunities and align programming with those opportunities.”
College Measures, another data tool, measures college performance by drawing on student retention data, money spent per student and other metric. The site also works with six states to measure the economic success of graduates. And PayScale collects data from employers to develop a list of which majors pay most.
These websites may offer a wider and more evidence-based glimpse at higher education than many of the popular college rankings. Yet as with every new assessment system, there are winners and losers.
“The risk with LinkedIn is that it definitely has a strong business focus,” O’Brien said. “So I think schools that send a lot of students into business or into technical fields … have potential to be winners.” Despite LinkedIn’s penetration of the professional market, some professions – elementary school teachers, social workers – tend to enter the site in smaller numbers.
And while LinkedIn’s feature shows liberal arts majors get jobs, some college-prep experts worry that the focus on job-getting might concede a larger battle about higher education’s purpose. Patrick O’Connor, a former president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said that while “there’s more to college than just a job,” in light of parental anxieties about college costs tools like LinkedIn’s application “could be the best way to get students in the door.”
“When you can use the internet to reach out to a student that feels disenfranchised in the college process … that’s what’s really exciting about these websites to me,” he said.
SOUTH BURLINGTON — Vermont Gas Systems said Tuesday it will exercise its eminent domain rights as soon as this week to secure a path for a natural gas pipeline extension through Addison County.
The natural gas utility said there are about 20 landowners who appear unwilling to sign easement agreements along the company’s 41-mile extension from Colchester to Middlebury, which is underway.
Company spokesman Steve Wark told a media roundtable at the company’s South Burlington headquarters that eminent domain is necessary to keep the project on track for completion by 2015.
The company is offering to pay for a third-party mediator to assist landowners in their negotiations during the eminent domain process, he said. State regulators would determine a price for the property if it is taken through the process of eminent domain.
Wark said the mediator will give landowners another tool to negotiate with the company. He said landowners would likely receive greater compensation for their property through mediation. Wark did not name who the company would hire but said landowners would have a choice among several mediators.
Maren Vasatka of Monkton has yet to sign the offer the company made to her family in January. She said a mediator will not help the situation for landowners reluctant to sign agreements.
Instead, Vasatka said the landowners need legal help to better understand the terms of the easement offers. She said many landowners are unsure what rights they are signing away in the agreements, including whether Vermont Gas can clear trees or build roads on their land to access the pipeline’s right-of-way.
“We’ve asked that these easements be clarified so that people who don’t know have the information they need to make the decision,” Vasatka said. “Most of them don’t have legal representation and they don’t have help or anyone asking the right questions.”
She said the most recent offer from Vermont Gas in May did not address her concerns with the right-of-way language. The Department of Public Service said the company has removed a requirement that landowners do not disclose the company’s offers.
Vasatka and other landowners have asked Vermont Gas to pay for legal representation. Vermont Gas has denied this request.
Wark said this would be like the company paying for a lawsuit against the project. He said landowners can instead ask the company to compensate them for legal expenses through negotiation.
Department of Public Service Commissioner Chris Recchia said the mediation process will be helpful for landowners.
“This is a necessary consequence of moving forward with the project,” Recchia said. “I think it’s a good step. And I think it’s a helpful tool to have available.”
He said landowners should seek legal advice and ask Vermont Gas to compensate them for any damages associated with the deal.
Wark said there are about 221 private parcels along the pipeline route. He said Vermont Gas has reached agreements with about 70 percent of the parcel owners with an additional 20 percent likely to close. Wark said about 10 percent are unlikely to close regardless of terms.
He said right-of-way land agents have told the company that they can “read the mood” of those landowners. He said those who are unwilling to sign an agreement oppose the project in general, disagree on the monetary offer, or do not trust the company, citing “missteps” the company made in the public outreach process, particularly in the towns of Monkton and Hinesburg.
The Vermont Public Service Board approved the first phase of the company’s pipeline extension in December. The company is therefore allowed to take private property through the process of eminent domain. Landowners can appeal the board’s decision.
The company said it has installed more than 250 miles of pipeline since 2001 without having to use eminent domain.
The company has also applied for a permit to build a pipeline from Middlebury to New York. It has also started planning for the third phase of its planned extension to Rutland.
Until his Social Security check arrived nearly $300 lighter last June, Eric Merklein, 67, had no idea that he was carrying outstanding student debt. Merklein eventually learned that the government was taking money from his Social Security payments to repay loans he took out roughly four decades ago; he had thought they were paid. Merklein was unemployed, and the garnishment amounted to one-sixth of his total monthly income.
“‘You gotta be making this up,’” Merklein says he thought, at first. “The fact that they didn’t even call me or send me a postcard saying they were going to be doing this, I mean, it’s just nuts.”
Merklein is one of a growing number of Americans aged 50 and older who haven’t finished paying their student loans. Student debt is growing faster for seniors than for any other age group, according to the latest data gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Lingering student loan debt is part of a broader and many elder-care lawyers say, devastating accumulation of debt among older Americans.
While people aged 50 and older hold only 17 percent of all U.S. student debt, this group has nearly three times as much debt as it did in 2005, according to the New York Fed data. By comparison, student debt for people under 40 is about one and a half times as high it was then.
The numbers don’t distinguish between older Americans who took out loans to finance their education and those who did so to put their children through college. A Gallup report released this month showed that people who took out loans decades ago are more likely to report low levels of health and financial well-being than their debt-free peers are.
For older Americans, owing for government-backed student loans can be particularly tough. Unlike other kinds of debt, including private student loans, collectors of federal student loan debt have the power to garnish income, block benefits, and withhold tax rebates. As a result, some older borrowers are seeing part of their Social Security payments seized and their wages cut off just when they are especially vulnerable.
Before Merklein went on Social Security in 2013, he was sure he didn’t have to worry about the money he borrowed from the government in 1970 to fund his undergraduate education. In the early 1970s, he says, his grandmother handed him an envelope with a note and a receipt that said the loan was paid in full. But Merklein lost the envelope—“I probably lost it within 48 hours, being a twentysomething at that time,” he says.
Now, nearly four decades after he went to college, the debt is haunting him. Merklein says that an agency collecting debt on the part of the government informed him that it has no record of the payment and that his loan accumulated interest for decades and went into default. He owed over $20,000, including collection costs, the agency said.
He spent hours speaking on the phone with debt collectors and says the government has stopped taking money out of his Social Security payments. He’s now paying $50 per month so that his loan can be transferred to a government repayment plan. He still worries about the Department of Education seizing his income without warning.
“They could come after me today,” he says. “And I would have no recourse.”
Garnishing social security checks is just one tactic the government can use to recoup money it is owed. Lawmakers gave federal officials far-reaching powers of debt collection two decades ago, after the largest federal loan guarantor collapsed and a congressional investigation revealed that schools were fraudulently receiving millions in federal grants.
Default rates have dropped by half since then, thanks in part to the government policies. But critics worry that the policies may also have crippled some who have no way to shake their debt, says Ben Miller, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation.
Some seniors are saddled with loan payments for an education that never led to stable employment. Debbie Crotinger, 55, borrowed around $10,000 to attend Garden City Community College in Garden City, Kans., in the early 1990s. She was going to college for the first time, fresh out of a marriage to a man she says was routinely abusive.
Crotinger never finished her degree because she couldn’t keep up with a full time job and the demands of childcare. She says she held minimum wage jobs for years while she looked after three kids. Now the government is garnishing about $235 per month from her $1200 monthly paycheck to pay off a loan that hovers around $40,000 with interest.
“They’re killing me,” Crotinger says, “I don’t know what to do about it. I figure I will be paying it off the rest of my life.”
Crotinger lives with her mother in Watonga, Okla., who is in her eighties, and says that after paying for her mother’s necessities, she has around $150 a month to pay for gas and other personal expenses. Crotinger’s only lifeline is the $40,000 in her late husband’s retirement account, but she hasn’t touched it.
“I am afraid to claim it because I’m afraid they’ll take it,” she says, referring to the government. She says she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if the money didn’t make it to her four children. “It’s not much, but it would help the kids out,” she says.
Fed Official Warns ‘Disappointing’ Growth Could Foretell Future
The Fed vice chairman Stanley Fischer. He says that the weak recovery might signal a structural shift in the global economy.CreditYuri Gripas/Reuters
Sounding a somber note even as the economic outlook in the United States brightens, the Federal Reserve’s No. 2 official acknowledged on Monday that global growth had been “disappointing” and warned of fundamental headwinds that might temper future gains.
The official, Stanley Fischer, who took over as vice chairman of the Fed in June, noted that although the weak recovery might simply be fallout from the financial crisis and the recession, “it is also possible that the underperformance reflects a more structural, longer-term shift in the global economy.”
In a speech delivered on Monday in Stockholm at a conference organized by the Swedish Ministry of Finance, Mr. Fischer also conceded that economists and policy makers had been repeatedly disappointed as the expected level of growth failed to materialize.
“Year after year, we have had to explain from midyear on why the global growth rate has been lower than predicted as little as two quarters back,” he said. “This slowing is broad-based, with performance in emerging Asia, importantly China, stepping down sharply from the postcrisis surge, to rates significantly below the average pace in the decade before the crisis.”
Mr. Fischer said it was difficult to determine how much of the slackness was because of cyclical factors and how much represented a more fundamental, structural change in advanced economies.
Three Huge Factors: But he warned of three pronounced headwinds that have held back growth in the United States: (1) a still anemic housing market, (2) cuts in federal government spending and (3) weaker global growth that reduced demand for American exports.
A report on Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that German economic growth might be slowing. Germany has been one of Europe’s rare bright spots, continuing to prosper even as countries on the periphery like Greece, Portugal and Spain struggle after the debt crisis of 2010-12.
After a very weak start to the year amid harsh wintry weather, economic growth in the United States has been increasing. Economists estimate that the American economy expanded at an annual rate of 4 percent in the second quarter, and are looking for the growth rate to remain at around 3 percent for the rest of 2014.
As a result, despite Mr. Fischer’s cautious tone on Monday, the Fed is planning to begin raising short-term interest rates next year, the first time it has tightened monetary policy since the onset of the recession.
On Wall Street, Mr. Fischer’s caution was not greeted negatively. Some traders were encouraged that it appeared that the Fed was in no rush to raise interest rates.
In addition to the three headwinds Mr. Fischer blamed for slowing growth in the last five years, he cited several long-term factors that could inhibit prosperity in the future.
One major worry is the slowing growth in the size of the American labor force, both because of demographic factors like the retirement of baby boomers and the legions of workers who have given up looking for jobs.
Noting that the proportion of Americans in the work force has been dropping steadily since 2000 — it has fallen to 62.9 percent now from 67 percent then — he said, “Many of those who dropped out of the labor force may be discouraged workers.”
And while some people may return to the work force as the unemployment rate continues to drop — it now stands at 6.2 percent compared with 8.2 percent two years ago — he cautioned that “skills and networks may have depreciated some over the past years.”
Looking further ahead, Mr. Fischer also waded into one of fiercest debates in economics — the question of whether recent anemic growth is a temporary, cyclical phenomenon or a more fundamental one that will last for decades or more.
Prominent pessimistic voices, like Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern, argue that for all the recent change wrought by the Internet, information technology will not deliver the kind of economic growth generated by the Industrial Revolution and developments over the last 150 years like electrification, railroads, indoor plumbing and the like.
Despite the gloomy tone of other parts of his speech, on this question Mr. Fischer hinted that he remains something of an optimist.
“Possibly we are moving into a period of slower productivity growth,” he said, “but I for one continue to be amazed at the potential for improving the quality of the lives of most people in the world that the I.T. explosion has already revealed.”
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