Richard Labors, Deputy Commissioner with the Department of Employment Security, told the Legislative Performance Audit Oversight Committee that the department submitted a letter explaining the remaining open item from a 2016 audit and that statutory changes in 2019 addressed the concern.

"The legislature in 02/2019, they made significant changes, with the job training program...The annual appropriation out of employer taxes got increased from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000," Labors said, describing a 2019 amendment that explicitly referenced the WorkReady New Hampshire program and required base funding as part of the job training program.

Labors said the WorkReady New Hampshire program is funded from the job training program and administered under a memorandum of understanding between the department and the community college system. He asked Chuck Lloyd and Chris Dudley from the community college system to join the committee and thanked them for attending.

Audit staff confirmed the action resolved the single remaining open observation from the 2016 audit. "In accordance with, again, 9 observations, 8 of which had been marked prior to coming in here as resolved. This was the last 1. So all 9 we're 9 for 9 now at this point," audit staff said during the meeting.

The committee marked the item as resolved on the audit tracking sheet; members requested no further action on this specific observation. The department said it will provide its written response for the record and that the community college system was part of program administration under the updated statutory framework.