ALC-Hospital, Medicaid, & Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
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- October 5, 2026
Speaker 1
1:30
Thank you.
Thank
you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank
you.
Speaker 4
5:00
Good morning, welcome to the committee meeting, I call this meeting to order, and this morning
Senator Jane English
Unverified
5:18
going to do today is we're going to kind of look at the audit that the Alliance for Opportunity did for us and kind of go through that.
So everybody received a copy of it. You were emailed a copy. Hopefully you had a chance to go through it and kind of look at one of the things that they were talking about in here that they pointed out. they did a lot of work and there's a lot of things we probably already know but it was very good to be able to read them and some of they they have some key recommendations for us to think about and which is something we'll be doing as we move along so I'm going to turn this over to Mary
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
6:08
Representative Bentley thank you Senator and again thank you all for showing up I know that we've been meeting quite often but this is really an important topic I think something transformative that will really change the lives of our kansas and move arkansas in a direction we have not been in we've been spending so much money um and not really seeing any results for all the money that's been invested and i know that all of you know our kansas work quite hard for their tax dollars so i'm extremely excited about moving things forward we've done so much with arkansas learns and moving our kids forward and with access we've got education moving a good
direction but we need to get those people up that have been stuck in poverty for a long time moving forward so i'm excited about it really um you want to start off with the key recommendations i think well yeah i
think that would be good so if you guys can look um in this report and the audit starting on page eight i love when we're looking at actionable steps uh to move things forward here uh i think if you look in the middle on page nine i'm just really excited to see the thoughts that they had moved forward of just getting regional alignment because each part of
our state there's different things that will affect uh the northeast part of the state and the northwest very different things that are going on so we can come things that work our economic development and our workforce areas and regional asking get the regions together working together i think it's extremely important for us to be working forward into integrating work into everything that we do um especially when we folks that are going to the dhf's offices if we look and see that's really the one spot in many of our rural districts you know we can come here to lord are going to see so many opportunities for people here that just are not available
out in the rural part of our state so if we can use our dhs offices and integrate those and get all of those folks trained to what's available for the uh for our constituents that are rural arkansas whether it be education or work training but have those folks just just even thinking to me it's a whole different mindset because right now when you go in the workforce office everything is are you eligible for food stamps are you eligible for medicaid but this is the first thing is what job opportunities are available to you what can we do to move you forward because some these people hadn't really even thought about that in a long time they feel trapped and have just felt like they're at a dead end so just trying to move things forward on that I think
is really exciting for us to look at that what can we do to get those folks aware of what's available education wise and training wise and I think uh with SNAP ENT
and all those things we'll really be able to move move folks forward so that's
Senator Jane English
Unverified
8:31
my opening comments and we'll go go from there and i think those uh the the uh thinking about things on a regional basis of all the workforce programs and all the dhs programs thinking about those on a regional basis rather than an individual site and that and then unfortunately that's what happens so many times
is we have um an individual site or an individual workforce area that has its own plan and has its own things rather than something that goes across the state of Arkansas. So we had those key recommendations, and one of them was to integrate the administrative structure, and that's kind of to move from these siloed agencies that we've got throughout the state government and put them together in one agency so that we have one group of
people, and everybody's talking about the same things. And then we have an integrated service delivery, which is exactly the same thing. It's kind of, rather than across the state, each individual DHS office and workforce office and healthcare, health department office, all of these things would have a central theme and location, and a plan that goes across all of them. But as Representative Bentley said, today what happens is that people go and apply for a benefit.
They do not go and apply for a job or think about that in a job. And some of the things where they have an opportunity to go, they don't have all of the options that the rest of us would have to be able to go in and see what kinds of programs are available at the two-year college or free training or whatever else that's out there in their region of the state. So they miss out on those opportunities, never really get a chance for a future.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
10:38
Representative Ledeman, would you like to check in? I just had a question, Mary, if
you all are ready to take a couple questions. Sure,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
10:48
certainly. Or maybe it's a discussion instead of a question. Yeah, we had hoped to be in room 151 so we'd have more of a discussion, but it's not available today, so I'm sorry. We're having to bounce around and
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
10:58
look around the column. We'll discuss it here. This is discussion time today, yes. Okay. Well, on page 8 there where you were talking about that, and I really like the idea of having one source. I believe that's something that we need to do, not just in this area,
but in a lot of areas. But on page 8 down there at the bottom, it talks about an imposed start date of July 1, 2027 for legislation recommended. And then it talks about a new name, a new secretary, and create new work groups. I mean, where is the executive branch on this? Are we talking about an additional secretary? Are we talking about replacing one of the current secretaries?
Senator Jane English
Unverified
11:41
What's the thoughts on that? So these were just recommendations that they made, and all of that would be to be determined, and that's what we will all be discussing. But I think that the, I believe that the executive branch and the legislative branch will be working together on all of this because it's to everybody's benefit. So that, what you're asking, that question, is really to be determined, and that's what our committee will
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
12:10
be doing. Okay. So, has the members of the executive branch been following us and working along with this?
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
12:16
Oh, yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Representative Beck. Thank you, Madam Chair. I sort of question discussion, I guess, and this might be one of those, another falls in that category will be determined later, but we've seen a lot of cases where services are being provided, and we go through one tier, and then we go down to another tier, another department, and then maybe another department down,
and each one of them is adding administrative costs to whatever block grant they're operating under and all that, and it's 12%, 12%, 12% before you go too far, you're out of money, right? Or have very little money to provide services. So my question or my discussion, I guess, would be more like this. I do like the idea of having the central location to where we can, you know, a person can go. We can get out.
Instead of collecting different data in 10 different locations, we've got all the data right here. And this is our path forward type of approach. I do like that. But is this, would this be done in a matter of where we're adding another layer or are we going to, I guess, cut into an existing layer as far as the administrative costs and all of that
Senator Jane English
Unverified
13:42
for this? I think the idea really is to reduce the administrative costs. If you go through this and look at what they determined while they were doing their studying is that an inordinate amount of money
goes for administrative and infrastructure costs, and very little of that money goes to servicing or training for people. There's a very small amount of money that anybody gets to get or every organization has. So the goal here really is to increase the number of the amount of dollars that we're spending on people and reduce the amount of dollars
we're spending on administration. Just a discussion.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
14:25
So, is it possible within our legislation that we could somehow put in that we would be able to say, okay, there are people who are strictly administrative, and that's what they do. They have their things, and what they're doing is great. But, you know, we find too often, in reference to what you just said, that there's where all the money's going and very little of the money is going to the actual people
who are doing the training or providing the service to someone trying to get them self-sufficient. Is there any way that we can integrate it within whatever proposal that we put together that sort of a generic guideline as to what percentages of the funds should be spent at the administrative level versus the level to the people that are actually what I'd call frontline workers they're actually helping the people get self-sufficient yeah what you're thinking those are
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
15:24
the recommendations that that's what we're after right yeah that's what the task
of this committee is to bring recommendations that can definitely be part of
the recommendations that we that we get down into
and if you look at um to me um i love on page eight where we need to know
and i was going to ask caitlin to do for us is to find out what is the eligibility requirements for each one of these programs like for hud and for snap and for ent all of them have different entry levels what is that can we consolidate that so to me if we can get eligibility also in one spot it's going to decrease the amount of administrative costs and all that and get it all working in one focus get everybody to work there's a
whole plan how can people earn money and get people that are in that are
trapped in poverty out of that so if it's okay we'll add represent Pilkington into the
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
16:11
conversation thank you chairs and I have a binder in front of me and I'm a little late to the conversation so if I'm saying anything redundant please just shush me. But I mean, it seems like from what I've seen with a lot of the new, with especially the AI recommendations from the governor that came out recently, a lot of this though, if we can just get a central database that uses artificial intelligence, it can interact with
the constituents, get the information and then self-populate this information, let them know what programs are eligible and things like that. I mean, I think in some ways we try to reinvent at the wheel but a centralized hub can be virtual and then of course as we expand telehealth with rural health transformation dollars as well I think there's a real opportunity to use some of those telehealth services to do it so a good example if you've got an app on your phone that's you're you know eligible to use because you have Medicaid yet at the same time while that is taking
its information from you it can ask you a few extra questions it needs then auto populate that information into certain forms and let you know other things you're available for and also probably notify um the department of workforce services that you are available for work to then send that information to employers who are actively working for people to work so i don't know if we've had any discussions with ai vendors or anything like that but i think this is something that that new technology can drastically help us with because we're talking about large amounts of data that we're going to have to comb through and having a program like that that's already doing it
I think, could massively save us a lot of money. And to represent Beck's point, I think we don't have as large of an administrative cost because we're not using people. We're using a program, and then the people are actually there on the ground getting them into these services as opposed to being stuck in an office and we're helping someone fill out a form. So I just want to add that to the conversation.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
17:57
Yeah, I think that's highly, especially when looking at DHS. They're already talking about using AI and all that for filling out different forms, getting people. But, again, we're going to have those constituents that don't have that technology, not available we want to definitely have case managers available i want you know even each one
of our offices dh offices across the state to have people have case managers there to help those folks that aren't to that point right that are because we have different age groups different people some are very comfortable doing stuff on the phone and others are not so i just want us to get everybody i want us to have an opportunity for us to make sure those people that are trapped in poverty for generations have a way to get out and someone to help them do that and also i think the way that we do this will help people accountable i think that's important you know when we have We bring in our different community organizations to hold people accountable and have people on the right track that are not, you know, that are actually moving forward and not just trapped in the system and using the system to not go forward.
And now let's have something else they want to add to the conversation
Senator Jane English
Unverified
18:55
looking at these key points moving forward. I think all of these two
are opportunities for us as we move forward. To have conversation groups and some organized, because AI is a really big thing, and so that deserves to have a working group of people to study AI
and what it could bring to this conversation. So I'm hoping we'll have a number of different working groups to look at each of these issues and have people together to talk about it, not just legislators but other folks as well. Yeah. That's great. Representative Lateman. Yeah,
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
19:41
thank you, Madam Chairman. Looking at page 53, where it's the one door to work, I think that's a great idea,
like a clearinghouse maybe. And, you know, I think if you could make that work, if we could focus on some groups that I think are not participating in the labor market because just of difficulties that they might have. You mentioned people that are in generational poverty, maybe they live in rural areas and are not aware of any programs or the programs. That's one group that needs to be focused on. But I think there's a couple others.
You know, I believe we need to tap in more to people that are coming out of prison for a bunch of reasons so that they don't go back. But, you know, it's very difficult for those folks to connect. They have no resources. Maybe they don't even have any family. I think we need a focus group on that that would add a lot of people to our labor market. And also people moving into the state, you know, our population is growing
Maybe sometimes they're they don't know our departments or who to contact To find, you know, the job that they're looking for that maybe they hadn't in another state So I think if we can have some focus groups and I believe that's what you're talking about here The working groups that might focus on one particular area, but I think that would be a good thing to consider
Senator Jane English
Unverified
21:15
that is probably at the forefront of all of this is we have somebody, just as you mentioned,
that sometimes have to go four, five, six different agencies to get the same paperwork almost filled out. Instead of being able to know these are the pieces of paper you have to fill out and that would go across all these agencies, as well as here are all the programs that are available for you as a person coming in so that you have an opportunity to look at what you might want to take advantage of, what are the options out there.
Today, if you just go into the DHS office, County Operations Office, nobody has any idea inside of there what the possibilities could be. We need to change that so that folks that are going into that office would actually have the benefit of knowing what those programs are that are out there that might be able to help them. And not just to go for a benefit, but how is this program or this benefit going to help you
to get where you need to be in the work world. The goal really is to start, figure out, and there's no silver bullet for everybody that is not working today or is on some of these programs today, but how do we build a system that includes everything so that people 10 years from now or 12 or 15 or 20 years from now aren't part of this system, but they have been able to find themselves a career pathway in the future,
and that's kind of what our education is at the beginning of that. So all of these things are kind of working together, there's no one silver bullet or one program that's going to solve it all. It's a combination of a
lot of things. It's a system. And a system is not a group
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
23:19
of federal programs. All right, Representative Beck. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to, Representative Pilkington, comment
on what I said. I'm going to comment back on what he was he had said but but i i think the ai is a perfect is a perfect way to
push this forward because it really addresses the issue at two points number one is ai will be much more efficient than having offices full of people trying to interpret data so that that always works better and i think that if it's done right ai is just priceless all right but if it's done wrong It's just another barrier, and it will be a barrier, as you mentioned earlier, to some of the people that, you know, aren't very computer literate or digital literate or whatever you want to say.
But I think part of the program also ought to be that with the AI group, using that as an administrative, that we make sure that there's oversight as to how that system is working. because I've seen a lot of times in the past we put a system in and, oh, it's a great system and it works really well. When we get five years down the road, no one's using it because it's not as great as we thought it was. So almost like a continuous feedback loop as to if someone's not using it,
why are they not using it? What's the hurdle that stopped them? That way we can make, I guess I'm being an advocate for having someone working continuously on it, Don't just do a one and done on an AI thing and say the world's going to be great to make sure that it works. Because the more that we can push into that arena, it means the more people that we can pull out of those offices and put them in front of people actually helping on an individual basis. So I think it's important that we don't just try a one and done approach to that.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:09
Yeah, I think that's what Senator English was saying. It's going to have to be different for a lot of different folks. So we want no wrong door, right? Every door is an opening for us to get people back to work. And with AI, you know, we're looking at maybe $50 million if we don't get our error rate decreased on SNAP. It's really important that we get a more efficient, effective system. So to me, that will be a way for us to hopefully get that number down below $6 million and we're not going to lose that $50 million
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
25:36
out of general revenue. All right, Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Maybe I've missed it, and I apologize. Is there an estimate of how much we're going to save with this or we're going to spend, but we have no estimate at what we save?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:48
No, but we have just looked at, you know, if we look at the audit here, if you go through and see how much money we're spending now on workforce and necessarily on workforce, the money we're spending, we're spending very little on actual training individuals, a minuscule amount when the rest of it's being spent on administrative costs. So we're trying to take, you know, not necessarily spend less money, but spend that money that we're getting federally more efficiently and effectively to actually get people to work and not just spending money on
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
26:15
an office administrative costs. I agree, and that's what we hope for.
But at some point, it seems like we would have a range of what we expect to save and what that cost savings is. And it seems like that would come fairly early in what this group plans to do. We're going to lay out, you're going to do these things. It seems like a deliverable would be to come up with cost estimates and our savings estimates that can be redirected somewhere needs to show up in a deliverable.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
26:50
Yeah, no, I agree. I think we'll have
that. Yeah, I think we'll definitely have that. Okay,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
27:02
thank you. Thank you. Representative Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am assuming that a lot of people who, I don't know, majority or just a large number, but I'm assuming a number of people who are receiving benefits or who might be eligible for benefits of some sort have possibly got a bunch of misdemeanors and issues like that,
lack of driver's license and things like that, and people who are coming out of the Department of Corrections that would be eligible to become productive citizens and have reason not to reoffend to go back to prison. Are we going to be incorporating any of this with their workforce objectives so that we can maybe possibly keep more people from reoffending
just to get three hots and
Senator Jane English
Unverified
28:03
a cot? I think the goal is to try and increase the labor force participation rate. It's not just the unemployment rate. It's all these people that are out there that aren't in part of the workforce, and they are part of that workforce. So some of the things that you're talking about I think will be our perfect place for the Governor's 1033 where they're working hard to try and get to those people
and some folks in communities that are in some really untenable situations and how to help them be able to move out of those situations, which may not be exactly the same as somebody at a Workforce Services office, being able to help somebody with their career pathway. But sometimes you have to have those other things going alongside to help people move forward. And the goal really is how do we get more people into the workforce?
And a lot of them are not sitting at home. Then you will find as we start looking through here that there are a lot of people who are working, but they're not making very much money. So they qualify for most of these programs. So we'll be looking at all of that as well. But the group that you're talking about is
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
29:26
exactly who we're trying to get part of this.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
29:31
Wonderful. Thank you. Representative Beck? I'll try not. I want to comment on the deliberal
comment, which I think is a great idea.
But I'm not so much interested. I'm not going to say that. But what I'm going to say is this. I think the deliverable needs to be tied to performance directly, like how many dollars are we spending per person that we're putting, making them self-sufficient into the system? You know, that type of deliverable to where it will have an automatic built-in feature where it says, okay, you know, you're doing what we want you to do,
and that's how you're getting the dollars and trying to keep those dollars under check, just like Senator Sullivan said. As far as Representative Brown's comment, I think that's great because I think, you know, if you don't, certainly the individuals coming out of prison system, you know, if you don't do something, they'll be back in a couple years. And that's at a cost to the taxpayers, so why not do that? But I think one of the things that we ought to try to do is to say,
If we can help with this system to make the best system, it's the system you want to plug into if you want to get a job. And then invite the people from the Department of Corrections when individuals are coming out of that system to be able to plug into this system because this is the system that's going to take you from, what was the thing, open the door, the one door to employment. So I think that's a great idea. I think both of those are great ideas. Thank you. Awesome. So I think,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
31:07
you know, when we're looking at this, if we can get this with the reentry programs that we currently have
and get them all into this data hub and know what's available regionally for those people to get a good job and training, then we're going to move people out. And we know there's going to be definitely more success for keeping them out of prison if we can get them
Senator Jane English
Unverified
31:25
a good job and moving forward with community support. Well, and one of the things I think, too, is that hopefully what we're going to see, as I said, there's
no silver bullet for today. But if some of the things that we're doing in education and we're trying to help people find a career pathway, hopefully down the road those numbers of people will be less and less going into prison, going on to Medicaid, going on to SNAP.
Some of these things because they have a life and they're productive citizens and they're being able to support their families. To Senator Sullivan's thing, I think if you look in here, one of the things that you have found, we found was that through our WIOA, our workforce things, we had about $14 million that goes out to all the 10 workforce development areas. Out of that $14 million, $1.5 million was spent on training and programs in one of the
areas, the only training program that they had was CDL, bus truck drivers. Now, there's a lot of people in that area, but that's the only training program they had. So those are the kinds of return on investment I think we're hoping that we change is that instead of $1.5 million for training, that we have upwards of that amount of money and less spent on
administrative costs and infrastructure. All right. Representative Ledeman. Thank you, Madam
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
32:55
Chair. Yeah, I appreciate what Representative Brown talked about there. And, you know, we've talked about people coming out of prison, but there are a lot of people, you know, if you've been to the courts and you've seen how many people are in there and they're in this legal process, they might be in that for a year or two.
And employers won't hire those people because they don't want to train them. They don't know where they're going to go, what's going to happen. So I think we're missing out on some productivity there. If we had a way to connect those people with companies or employers who would be willing to give them a job while they're going through the legal process. I believe there's a whole bunch of people in that group.
And I believe they're nonproductive right now, and I believe they could be productive if they had the right connections to people that would be willing, you know, to bring them on board for that period of time, even though there's some unknowns there. And that's just another group that we can identify, and if we all got together and think about it, there's probably other groups where we could really increase our workforce. So anyway, I just wanted to make
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
34:13
that comment. Thank you, and I think it's key that, again, that we have actual industry leaders involved in this conversation
because too many times they're left out, right? So exactly what do they need and how can we connect is going to be key to making sure we move this forward in the manner that
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:31
we want it to. So Representative Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. Two things. I'm not quite certain, but I believe we're going to be trying to address the benefit cliffs while we're doing all of this. Yes, definitely part of the conversation. then another thing that I think is very concerning is that we have people involved with DHS which
I mean I've got it's not my constituent but a constituent has reached out to me he and his wife are going through all kinds of nightmares with classes and counseling and stuff he is a productive person making at least $100,000 a year. He has lost $20,000 in annual income simply because of all the classes he's been having to take for things they have not been accused of. We need
to look at DHS and see what they're doing to hinder people from making a living
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
35:29
while we're at it. Well, that's definitely part of this committee's task, so we'll look forward to digging deep into that
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
35:37
as well. So Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I think this idea that we believe
this and we hope this and we anticipate this, some of those are known numbers. We know how many people are incarcerated. We have a projection that the people that are doing the
study should be able to project that we hope to improve that number by X and that when those people are involved in the workforce, that they're going to make a salary. We know what the average salary is, what Y is, and hopefully these people have had experience doing this. So it's not just us out on an island hoping and believing. There are real numbers out there to go by. We know what those numbers are. They can get those from other states and other places they've been involved in.
You know, I don't know any of us that would be willing to invest anything not knowing what our return on investment is. And I think that is a requirement to give us a range. And they can give us a range based upon what their expectations are. And if we expect if these things happen, this will be our return. If those things happen, this will be our return. Surely they can have the data out there from other projects
and ongoing with this project to give us feedback on their, and I see that in the document, that they'll give us continual updates on their success. What determines success? I mean, is success saving money? Is success putting people in jobs and losing money? What determines that?
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:19
I don't know. So our goal, really, for this committee was to look at social program and workforce development reform.
Right. So looking at all the myriad, probably 40 different workforce development programs and about 80 social services programs. So of all of those programs, how efficient are they? And how are they helping to serve people? And how do we do a better job of coordinating those efforts so that we're not just spending billions of dollars a year and it's going out the door, but we don't see any benefit to the people that they're serving or that they're spending money on.
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
38:04
I agree with you 110%. Those numbers should be quantifiable.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
38:08
But I don't know that we have those numbers that that's what our consultants, they're going to help us to
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
38:16
come up with those numbers. Yeah, I'm not necessarily disagreeing. I'm saying those numbers should be
quantifiable, that they're quantifiable now. We may not have it, and that may be their first project is to quantify what those data points are because that's what we're going to use to make the projection about how much we're going to save
or how much we're going to lose in this. So I think we're not disagreeing with you, but i just want to be clear that i think there needs to be some ranges out there on what they think we're wasting on our savings on and what that number will be thank you thank you senator and i agree with you 100 there's
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
38:56
no reason we can't get an roi and what we're trying to do and once we give them specific data what specific goals we want to go for so we have to set out
what we want to do and once we get those data points then we can move forward and getting some specific yeah awesome good deal all right anybody else want to chime in on this conversation at this point so all
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:25
right we want to move to Jill sure so Miss Thayer if
you would like to join us please at the table and we will talk about our
Speaker 84
39:37
contract yeah Mason's on the the key on
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:44
the teams so in case we have questions they are here there is thank you for joining us and if you'd identify yourself you'll
Speaker 85
39:56
be recognized Thank You madam chair Jill Thayer Bureau of Legislative Research and I think you should all have and is it in their packets Kate yes you should all have in your packet a copy of a draft consultant services agreement between the bureau and work ed consulting LLC who mr. Bishop represents I'm just going to go
over the main terms of this contract for y'all and then I'll be happy to answer any questions um attachment a to this contract sets out the statement of work that work ed would perform for this subcommittee um as it relates to your study that you were just discussing that was assigned to you under act 145 of 2025 um if you'll look at page two this contract would be effective march 20th the reason for that is if this subcommittee decides today to move forward
with this contract it will then go through the executive subcommittee at its march 19th meeting and then final approval would be by the full legislative council on march 20th and once that occurs marty would be able director garrity would be able to sign the contract and it would be effective the contract would run through june 30th of 2027 this would provide you with this consultants' assistance through the regular session. If there is legislation that results
from your study, they can assist with that. The maximum contract amount under this contract is $158,000. The Bureau always sets out a maximum contract amount that's based on actual billable hours. WorkEd has set out their fees and estimated expenses in attachment B to the contract. So they would bill us monthly we would pay them for actual hours worked and actual travel expenses up
to $158,000 if they were requested to perform any services outside the statement of work that set forth here you would have the ability to request an additional 10% from the and that would be approved by legislative council chairs they do have a few subcontractors listed that they'd like to utilize in this contract, and they are members of the Georgia Center for Opportunity team that assisted you and completed the audit and recommendations that you were just reviewing,
and they are also listed under the fees and expenses. The rest are just our typical contract terms, and I would be happy to answer any questions. Senator Sullivan. Thank you. My Questions may be
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
42:44
directed to Mr. Bishop if that's, is that appropriate at this time? Yes, while he's here. Thank you
for being here, first of all, and appreciate it. And I may have missed out some of the meetings or some of the questions you may have already answered. I apologize for that.
So are the deliverables that are in this contract services, are those
similar to what you've done in other states? Yes, and they're very similar to my earliest
Speaker 92
43:11
experience in Utah in the 1990s when I was directly involved in creating the Utah Department
Speaker 93
43:16
of Workforce Services. So I've been at this for about 30 years. Yeah, I think I was here when you did that. I think
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
43:23
you've been here to give a presentation, haven't you? Correct. Yeah, and I remember being here at that one. So, again, I just wanted to get that on record that you –
So are you able then, with your previous experience, able to give us ongoing return on investment updates? When you give those updates, you'll be able to come and say, here's what we're doing. We know the cost, so this will be anticipated savings at this point. And those certainly are, we anticipate those will change as circumstances change. but will that be included in your reports? Yes, absolutely. We can
Speaker 93
44:06
do that. And I should add that
my most recent experience was in Louisiana, helping them go through their year long process of moving from an executive order task force in their case to legislation a year later. So, okay. And so ROI is something we can absolutely
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
44:24
help. Yeah. Is that, I would see a need to have that in a contract. Is that normal? It's in a contract and I don't mind doing an abnormal, But I would see that as having language in the contract that says we're going to get ongoing return on investment updates and we define what that is.
Speaker 93
44:43
Is that unusual? No, I mean, absolutely. I'm open to whatever deliverables, activities you want in the contract, and that would be appropriate. At this point, you know, I think we left it somewhat high level so that there would be flexibility that I could be directed by you and by the chairs to do the work that you need me to do.
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
45:06
Yeah, I'm fine with that. It's got to be fairly general because it's very dynamic in what you're addressing and the conditions change with every new study you do or the outcomes.
Speaker 100
45:18
Okay, thank you very much. The ROI, absolutely. We can
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
45:23
give you ongoing ROI updates, absolutely. And can you provide that language? I guess it's in other contracts. Can you work with BLR to provide samples of what that language looks like? Sure. I'd hate to create
Speaker 95
45:33
something new if it's already done. And Senator Sullivan,
Speaker 85
45:36
I would say if that's the will of the subcommittee, we'll get it added to the statement of work for what's presented to the executive subcommittee. Okay, I may have to come
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
45:44
up with my own contract then because I want to see it. Thank you.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
45:53
Representative Lateman thank you madam chair I have a question on the contract on that attachment a that first paragraph and I don't hope I'm not duplicating what Senator Sullivan just asked but it talks about services and technical assistance as directed by the co-chairs of this subcommittee and not that I distrust our chairs of this subcommittee but is there any and it talks about BLR staff, but would the co-chairs of council or anyone else need to review these
requests on an ongoing basis? Or I don't know, maybe chairs can dress that. Is that necessary? So the subcommittee is
Speaker 85
46:41
defined at the beginning of the contract as this subcommittee. And that's typically how we do that. It wants legislative council authorizes you to utilize the consultant by approving the contract then they leave it to the final say on that is usually the chairs of that subcommittee i know a lot
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
47:00
of times uh when we have things like this we'll have just the
chairs of council sign off uh just so that they know what's going on i don't know in this case whether that's necessary or not um maybe chairs might want to comment on that but um just a question
about oversight i'll just say that we have kept um the chairs
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
47:21
of lc informed of every move that we make um they have been keenly they've been involved in conversations and as we move forward this whole thing we brought them in to make sure that they're keenly aware of what we're doing as well as the administration knows exactly what we're doing and moving forward
so it's the will of this committee we're just right now looking at recommendations but i think it's uh highly important to have mason and his group working with us to make sure that we're moving in the right direction this is very um this is complex this is not what we're trying to do here is transformative and nothing simple i think it's really important if we want to do it correctly to have folks that have done it elsewhere in other states to bring us and move us forward in the direction that we want to go so that's what today's contract is to make sure we have their their keen insight and their experience to move us forward in the direction that we want to go and uh and do it in a fast manner we're trying to get things done pretty quick during um as even
hours are moving forward with the waivers and stuff for workforce these are things moving forward instantly that we want to get some their input on and they'll be able to attend zoom with us to meetings that we have um with this group so i hope that answers
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
48:23
your question i'm not i'm not making a recommendation for that i just
thought it was something that we need to consider and think about so thank you madam chair I have any
Senator Jane English
Unverified
48:37
other questions discussions I don't see any other discussions
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
48:46
I have a motion by anyone to move forward with this contract Representative Beck and do we need a second Senator Sullivan okay all those in favor of moving forward with this contract say aye those opposed All right. Thank you, committee. It looks like we'll move forward with the contract. Mason, thank you so much. We look forward to some amazing transitional things happening here in Arkansas. Thank you so
Senator Jane English
Unverified
49:11
much. It's exciting. Thank you. We have something really, really exciting that we can do here in state government.
We've done some exciting things over the past few years, but I think this is probably one of the most exciting things we can do. So
I think we're finished. Yep. All right. If seeing no other business, we are adjourned. Thank you, Mason.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Discussion of Final Report Provided by Georgia Center for Opportunity [Exhibit B]
C. Approval of Proposed WorkED Consulting, LLC Contract
D. Discussion of Recommendations by Subcommittee
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Speaker 1
Speaker 4
Speaker 3
Speaker 5
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
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Representative Jack Ladyman
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Representative Rick Beck
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Representative Aaron Pilkington
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Speaker 31
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Representative Matt Brown
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Speaker 84
Speaker 85
Speaker 92
Speaker 93
Speaker 100
Speaker 95