Woman Reappointed to Jobs Agency Post

She once recruited new employees for the burgeoning aerospace and defense industries. Now, Jacquelyn Richardson hopes to place some of those displaced defense workers in new jobs.

Richardson, a Simi Valley education and personnel consultant, was recently reappointed head of the Job Training Policy Council of Ventura County, a nonprofit corporation that handles $14 million in job training money.

“We’ve seen a lot of layoffs, and there are more to come,” Richardson said. “I’m committed to using our federal funds wisely to help former defense and aerospace employees transition to other types of work.”

Richardson, who has headed the agency for two years, was nominated by her colleagues for a second two-year term. The appointment was then confirmed by the county Board of Supervisors.

The supervisors have begun playing a larger role in the jobs programs in the past year, after state legislators passed a law holding county governments liable for any misuse of federal funds by the employment agencies.

“There is liability; therefore, they’re just taking more of an interest,” said Aram Saroyan, spokesman for the jobs agency.

A year ago, the U. S. Labor Department found that the Ventura County agency had misspent $500,000 in the 1980s. The case involved a former director who was drawing salaries from two federal agencies and awarding contracts to a private firm that he headed, the Labor Department said.