Although not on par with the citizen board financial and oversight shenanigans of the Bay Bridge Commission, DGIF, and VRS, the Western Virginia Workforce Investment Board is in the news for a membership purge that all but eliminated “diversity” of membership. The chairman reduced the size of the board from 40 to 14 and the resulting group had no minority representation. Naturally, this has caused the predictable sturm and drang.

Fixing the diversity issue will be easy, but there’s a bigger problem:

The little-known board is federally mandated by a 1998 law. The Roanoke-area board receives more than $1 million a year from the federal government to fund local work force training programs. It’s one of 17 work force boards in the state and represents eight localities.

But state officials believe the boards are not as effective as they could be.

That’s an understatement. Does anyone have any experience with these boards in their communities? Can anyone point to something tangible they’ve done to help dislocated workers get real jobs?