HB 1058: Reduce Labor and Regulation Department’s Research and Reporting on Labor Market

The Department of Labor and Regulation would less work on its plate. House Bill 1058, which the House Commerce and Energy Committee has filed at the department’s request, would remove some of Labor and Regulation’s duties related to tracking workforce recruitment and the labor market.

Sections 1 and 2 of HB 1058 are mostly innocuous, removing the Department of Labor and Regulation from the agencies to which other state departments, boards, and commissions must submit annual reports on the number of South Dakota post-secondary graduates who take professional licensure or certification exams and the number who pass those exams. HB 1058 only requires those reports be sent to the Board of Regents and the Board of Technical Education on their respective graduates. Eliminating those duplicate submissions shouldn’t hurt: the public can still track down those reports, and we can thus still keep an eye on our success in training and retaining new workers.

Sections 3 and 4, however, smell of long afternoon cigar breaks. Currently SDCL 13-1-63 directs the DLR to help the Regents and the Board of Tech Ed “determine the job placement outcomes” for their graduates. Section 3 strikes that requirement, and Section 4 strikes the requirement that DLR compile and report such information to the Legislature’s Executive Board. Now I suppose DLR could still take the “all on the same team” perspective and voluntarily help their post-sec-ed brethren and sestren gather that data, but striking that section also leaves the door open for DLR to reject any such research requests—”Sorry, Regents, we’re too busy doing favors for the Governor’s kin to help you find workforce/accountability data.”

Section 5 looks like the real killer. It strikes SDCL 60-6-23, which requires DLR to “publish a bulletin in which shall be made public all possible information with regard to the state of the labor market, including reports of the businesses of the various public employment offices.” Hmmm… maybe since we’re closing public employment offices, we don’t need reports on their business, but the rest of Section 5 suggests that DLR wants to get out of the business of helping the public understand the state of the job market.

HB 1058’s first two sections may not hurt, but Sections 3, 4, and 5 look like an attempt to make it harder for the public to get useful information about the labor market and the success of state policies to improve that market. Before I can accept HB 1058 as written, I’ll need to hear some testimony in committee explaining that the informational services this bill appears to deny will still be mandated by other statute.