This story is adapted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday. It was originally published under the title “Downstream Effects.”
Last fall, the state Department of Public Health and Human Services announced it would be seeking a single, statewide contractor to provide employment assistance and training to Montanans receiving food and cash aid from SNAP and TANF, two of the state’s most prominent public safety net programs.
In January, the state said it intended to tap the company Maximus, a global government contractor, to roll out a hybrid in-person and virtual service model starting this spring. Part of the contract will be pay-for-performance in an effort to incentivize finding career, education and advancement opportunities for enrollees, according to the state’s recent public presentations to lawmakers.
The intent of the new contract, the department has said, is to create more consistency in how employment assistance and training are offered, more efficiently move beneficiaries into sustainable jobs and education programs, and make it easier to access services anywhere in the state through a virtual platform.
The impact, at least in the short term, has included the closure of some of the brick-and-mortar community nonprofits that have contracted with the state to do that work for decades.
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In a March 20 letter posted to its website, the Career Training Institute in Helena announced that the loss of the SNAP and TANF assistance contracts meant that it will be “dissolving” the nonprofit “after 4+ decades of successfully providing workforce development in the tri-county area.” The state’s decision to hire a single contractor that can run a virtual platform, it said, had made CTI’s local model uncompetitive.
Discussions about possibly subcontracting with Maximus, the letter continued, convinced CTI’s leaders that such an arrangement “would not be feasible.” CTI Executive Director Jasyn Harrington declined to provide additional comment about those discussions in an email last week.
“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I write this,” Harrington wrote in the published letter. “For 41 years, CTI and its staff has been embedded in this community. We have established working relationships with our community social service partners, training providers, post-secondary institutions and employers, all in an effort to provide individualized assistance to our clients to overcome barriers to employment and enter the workforce. We have literally helped thousands of community members to improve their lives.”
Harrington also expressed doubts about the new partly virtual contract: “I, and many others, have great concerns regarding the new service delivery model DPHHS has chosen and its potential devastating impact on clients.”
Another organization, Career Futures in Butte, has also said the loss of the state contracts will force its closure in the coming months. Maximus has said some groups have decided to continue on as subcontractors, but has not publicly specified which ones. The company will begin accepting new client caseloads in April.
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