How NOT to help someone get a job: Capes!

If you had $73,000 of taxpayer money to spend on helping the jobless, would you spend it on superhero capes and an evil villain? Workforce Central Florida (WFCF) tried it, and watched the program blow up on them. Yahoo News had the details:

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Job center blasted for giving

capes to unemployed

ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida officials are investigating an unemployment agency that spent public money to give 6,000 superhero capes to the jobless.

Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its “Cape-A-Bility Challenge” public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, “Dr. Evil Unemployment,” who needs to be vanquished.

Florida’s unemployment agency director asked Monday for an investigation of the regional operation’s spending after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about the program. State director Cynthia Lorenzo said the spending appeared to be “insensitive and wasteful.”

Workforce Central Florida Director Gary J. Earl defends the program, saying it is part of a greater effort to connect with the community. The agency says it served 210,000 people during its last fiscal year, placing nearly 59,000 in jobs.

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The Orlando Sentinel provides more details about this program:

The budget for the campaign was $73,000, with more than $14,000 being spent on capes and almost $2,300 on the “Dr. Evil” figures. Although the agency has said that was all public money, Vice President Kimberly Sullivan on Wednesday suggested the capes were bought using cash from a non-public account. She provided no details.

Agency officials had portrayed the campaign as a fun, unusual way to engage the public. Many of Central Florida’s 116,000 unemployed saw it as juvenile or, worse yet, insulting.

Many of Florida’s unemployed let Workforce Central Florida know their feelings. The result was in this message, posted on the WFCF web page last Wednesday:

ORLANDO, Fla. – WORKFORCE CENTRAL FLORIDA has listened to the public, and will be withdrawing our admittedly out-of-the-box creative campaign, “Cape-A-Bility Challenge” later today.

Seems that Workforce Central Florida forgot about E.Mode’s First Law: