The lawmaker with direct oversight of the General Services Administration blasted the agency this week for failing to launch a required jobs training program intended to help women and minorities get work tied to stimulus-related construction projects.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., inserted language into the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, signed into law in February, that requires GSA to spend $3 million out of the $5.5 billion it received under the stimulus bill to launch apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs providing on-the-job training for building, repairing and altering federal buildings.

Norton said the goal is to provide job opportunities to minorities and women, who historically have been underrepresented in construction-related job fields.

During a hearing Tuesday before the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on economic development, public buildings and emergency management, which Norton chairs, a GSA official acknowledged that the program had yet to begin. Kevin Kampschroer, acting director of GSA's Office of High-Performance Green Buildings, said GSA signed an agreement with the Labor Department earlier this month to proceed with development of the apprenticeship programs.

GSA is identifying construction projects and locations where the programs will be offered and has hired a consultant to identify existing apprenticeship programs in states where GSA will be spending stimulus funds, Kampschroer said.

But Norton said GSA should have been able to launch the apprenticeship program in at least one location by now, and said GSA was acting as if it had received a large sum of money to launch training programs across the nation.

"It's very, very disappointing to me. It was not easy for me to get the funds. With so few funds, all this consultation is ‘make work,' " Norton said, her voice quivering.

Norton said she had called Bill Guerin, head of GSA's Recovery Act program management office, several weeks ago and prodded him to get the program under way. She expressed shock at how little had been done as a result.

"I can't express enough anger that when the chair of the subcommittee calls, that doesn't make a bit of difference to get people moving," she said.

Norton said she would be calling GSA officials to meet with her and committee staff this week to determine what's holding up the program and to get "something on the ground" by Aug. 1.

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