Former congressmen Thomas Downey (D- N.Y.) and Rod Chandler (R-Wash.) will debate the changing role of the federal government in the workplace Thursday, April 18, in Washington, D.C. The debate, part of a half-day conference sponsored by Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and its Institute for Labor Market Policies, will begin at 8 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave., N.W.

In addition to the former congressmen, Elaine Kamarck, senior policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore, will offer remarks.

Downey and Chandler are now, respectively, chairman and president of Downey-Chandler Inc., a public affairs consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Downey represented New York's 2nd district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1993. As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, he served as acting chairman of its Subcommittee on Human Resources and on the Human Service Subcommittee of the Select Committee on Aging.

Chandler represented Washington's 8th district from 1983 to 1993 in the House and was a member of the Education and Labor, Banking, and Ways and Means committees.

Immediately following the Downey-Chandler debate, a panel discussion will address "Can the States Do It Better? Examining Block Grants for Job Training." Panelists will be Lisa Lynch, chief economist with the U.S. Department of Labor; Roberts T. Jones, president of the National Alliance of Business; Peter Cappelli, professor and chair of the Management Department at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School; and John Bishop, professor and chair of the Department of Human Resource Studies in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

The half-day conference will conclude with a panel discussion on "Regulatory Reform: Is Less Really More for Health and Safety in the Workplace?" Participants are Randel Johnson, workplace policy coordinator for the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities; Peg Seminario, director of the AFL-CIO Department of Occupational Safety and Health; Alan Krueger, former chief economist of the U.S. Labor Department and the Bendheim Professor of Economic and Public Affairs at Princeton University; and Thomas Kniesner, professor of economics at Indiana University.

Panel moderators are Bob Zelnick, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, and Bruce Collins, vice president of C-SPAN.