WASHINGTON – A federal program touted as the answer to helping displaced workers in Maine and other states find new jobs has been bogged down, with assistance delayed for months, congressional investigators report.

Maine and 24 other states say Labor Department tardiness has forced them to delay or deny emergency assistance to workers who are notified their jobs are being eliminated.

Legislative aides who crafted the legislation said the aid was supposed to reach workers before they left businesses that are laying off employees or closing operations.

Instead, the help often is held up more than three months, or it never materializes, Congress’ General Accounting Office reported this month after surveying the states.

“If you can’t get into a plant before it closes, the workers are dispersed,” said Jane McDonald-Pines, a policy analyst for the AFL-CIO. “Labor representatives in the states said they’re tearing their hair out” in frustration.

The Labor Department disputed the length of delays in a letter to GAO, contending they averaged 53 days.

The department blamed states for submitting incomplete applications that need more work. It listed reasons such as requests that cover the same workers as other petitions, applications for the wrong grant program, submissions that fail to document the need for assistance for those laid off months earlier, and missing data like layoff dates and numbers of workers involved.

The Labor Department said it is now committed to approving grants within 15 days of receiving an application, and it is developing an Internet-based system that would allow states to apply electronically. The guidelines and the electronic system should be operating next month, the department said.

Congressional aides said they had practical goals in mind, such as matching the skills of vulnerable workers to vacancies in a state or region and immediately retraining workers to qualify them for available jobs.

Among other goals were providing special assistance, such as English classes for immigrants, and advertising the availability of specific workers to businesses that may move to the area.

Bill Clinton, while president, had said the program would ensure every displaced worker needing training would receive it. He envisioned one-stop career centers where those facing joblessness could get assistance and information on learning new skills.

The GAO concluded that the Labor Department rarely meets its goal of awarding money to states and localities within 30 days of receiving an application.

“Nearly 90 percent of regular grant awards took longer than 30 days, and about 46 percent took 90 days or more,” the GAO said. It studied awards from July 1, 2000 through June 30, 2003.

After the program’s financial year ends each June 30, the Labor Department must receive new funds to begin awarding grants, congressional aides said.

That might explain why, according to the report, it took an average of 111 days to award the grants during the first quarter of each program year.

In addition to the 25 states reporting they were forced to delay or deny assistance, 33 of the 39 states that received at least one grant from July 1, 2000, through June 30 this year reported delays were a major problem.

Congress passed the current emergency program in 1998. Between 2000 and 2002, Labor awarded $614 million in national emergency grants in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Micronesia.

In those years, there were almost 60,000 mass layoffs involving 50 or more workers. Nearly 7 million people lost their jobs.