ALC-Hospital, Medicaid, & Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
0:37
good afternoon everyone. thank you so much for coming back again for another important meeting. I think that you guys will all find this discussion really will take off from what we started this morning hearing from Nick Moore on the federal level we hear some results from the state level so as if you guys will all remember this is the company that we hired to do an audit for us of what's going on in Arkansas with our current workforce and so they're here back to report to what they found out. So today we have with us Rachel Barkley, Mason Bishop and Les Ford all here from the alli ance for Opportunity and we're
so glad to have them here in person a little bite than trying to do something on Zoom so thank you all for taking the time to be here with us today. we really appreciate it. So I'll see if Senator English has anything to say before we get started. She's fine. right. Everybody get your pencils ready for some questions and we'll start with the report. Thank you all
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:26
so much for being here. thank you so much for bringing us in to do this work we have spent lots of time virtually and in person with folks in your state over the past few months and we are grateful for the leadership of Senator English
and Representative Bentley and you all in wanting to address these important issues we are I'm Rachel Barkley I'm the executive director of the alliance for Opportunity and my colleagues here are senior fellows with the project and we have two more folks on the phone EricRandolph andRay packer and amongst the five of us we have gosh probably5 or6 decades of maybe probably more decades of experience working in state agencies in state
legislatures in Congress and at the federal level on issues of workforce and public assistance or safety net funding you'll hear us use those words interchangeably for kind of the human services programs and we are all about doing research and work across states to see how we can help people move from dependence on government programs into lives of flourishing through the dignity of work so that that's our background and you all brought us on for these objectives you
see on the screen so we looked at the participation across workforce and public assistance or safety net programs and what those costs what the administrative costs look like and we are looking for improvement so when we talked to you all at the beginning of this contract you said we don't want it just to see the numbers we want to know what we can do differently what we can change and so today we're coming to you with not only a diagnosis but also some suggestions. Now our methodology
we looked at publicly available reports we also asked your agency officials for some numbers some outcomes behind the scenes in their in their data sets but importantly we spent a week here in redhS county offices and three workforce offices where we interviewed and observed what's going on in those offices on the ground with caseworkers with folks working throughout the the
systems and the services as well as many virtual interviews with agency leaders running the programs so how this presentation is going to go is we're going to talk about what currently exists, what does the system look like and then we're going to give our diagnosis and talk about what we found in those site visits and then we'll talk finally about what we see as best practices across other states as a plan moving forward some options for you all to think about and then of
course taking questions and feedback from you all. so I'm gonna start with what does your workforce look like with some key numbers you all can see these numbers and I think I'm gonna start maybe with some some bad news on this slide and then we'll move to good news on the next slide of things you're doing well here in Arkansas but if you just kind of look at the environment the state of things in Arkansas the the number I want you to really key in on is
that 202,000,202,000 prime age working adults who are not engaged at the workforce at all and you say well that doesn't match up with our unemployment rates numbers your unemployment rate numbers don't catch folks who are not engaged in work search. so our methodology brings together everybody on the sidelines who is disconnected from work people who have fallen out who are not even looking for work anymore. so that's a that's a large number of human capital on the sidelines in your state
also important is you have over a million folks on medicaid and CHIP that's more than30% of the population and you have more than 10% of your population who are on Snap so these are just things to keep in mind globally about the states. also consistently Arkansas is in the bottom 10 states when it comes to labor force participation rate. so that's kind of the the bad news portion of what we're trying to fix with this work today.
Now the good news is you all have done quite a few things to lay the groundwork for some good actions moving forward very important is the 2023 Learns Act. K through 12 obviously sets you up for a good workforce in the future so education reform critical you've done a lot of work on integrated eligibility in your public assistance that's medicaidsnap and Tani that means behind the scenes you're doing eligibility in an integrated system
in in your data in your intake there's been a lot of work in your shared services to integrate across programs and we'll talk later about why that's important that data sharing infrastructure is there even if it's not fully being utilized yet it is there it is built in your state which is great. governor Sanders 1033 initiative we think lays the groundwork for some important case management that wraps around and helps these families flourish inbo und migration is good news you
have people, human capital coming into the state and this last piece I want to make sure we think about is that and I know you had a presentation right before us from DC is that the aggencies in DC right now are very friendly to innovation. they are asking states to come up with innovative ideas on these federal programs and to make the systems better so DC is saying bring us your ideas so you're in a good environment for that.
now before I pass it and introduce my colleagues here to talk more in depth about workforce and then the safety net this is this was this took us many many hours to put together because as you can see we've got a very diffuse much very complicated system. So what you see in this screen the red level at the top are your federal agencies so I won't sugarcoat it a lot of the problems are handed down from DC and how they administer the
programs across agencies. So you see you know, dC the Department of Education, Department of Labor, etc. comes up with different rules for programs and then you go to the next layer the dark blue layer are your state level agencies then you go to the light blue layer those are the programs themselves and then if you go to the very bottom the gray the gray boxes are your intermediary like local school districts
community and technical colleges workforce sports those are kind of your local intermediaries the very bottom layer of boxes is how individuals apply for services. look at all of those different avenues people go through to apply for different programs and services. and then the bottom yellow level are families who need the help and so with that I'm going to hand it over to masonbishop who has worked across many different states and has deep knowledge in
how to reform our workforce training programs he's gonna go over what the workforce system looks like and why systems are important to success and then less forward who worked in the White House Les and mason have both worked in the White House and on these stateleve programs less will talk about how our safety net programs are administered here in Arkansas. So Mason will go to you thank you Rachel it's good to see you all
Speaker 15
9:24
again. I was here in august and had an opportunity to present
Speaker 17
9:30
Mason if you don't mind pull that microphone just a little bit closer toar much much better
Speaker 18
9:36
thank you thank youy appreciate it so before we go to the next slide I
Speaker 15
9:42
do want to address the right hand side of of the organization slide because this becomes really important with regard to some of the issues you'll see there that essentially what I like to say is that we don't have a workforce system in the states what we have is a set of silo programs working side by side by
side and it's important as we look to how to reform these programs how to modernize the Arkansas and how to actually create a comprehensive workforce system in Arkansas that it become real clear that part of what we're dealing with is federal legislation that has been going on for decades but that there are opportunities for you to actually take what are current parameters in federal law and and turn them on their head a bit and be
innovative. Primarily what I want to get across is if you look at the right hand side of this you'll see the 10 local workforce boards. What becomes important is a lot of times as legislators and as public official s you will hear that workforce is local that it must stay local, that it must run through these local boards and and local workforce development areas local boards and local workforce development areas are defined by the federal workforce innovation and Opportunity Act however the only dollars that
the local boards are responsible for administering are the WIOa Title I dollars of which your current appropriation is roughly 14 to15 million dollars per year right now. so it's like the tail wagging the dog. it's like saying we're gonna structure our workforce system around these local boards of which only have a very small portion of the dollars. Now the other thing you're going to hear from us is that cost allocation how do you actually
bill the federal government for all these different programs and how do you do that and right now under the under the WIOa law it actually asks these local boards to negotiate in 10 different ways how the all of these federal partner programs are to work together in 10 different ways in 10 different geographies across the state of Arkansas and yet of those all those programs that they're negotiating cost allocation plans for you essentially they're only
responsible for the one title one so what do you have you have all these other programs sort of like in a de minimis way saying we'll participate or we'll we'll talk to you and work with you but you really don't have a structured way to create a funded workforce system of which people have access to training to education and to upward mobility just to show you one of the interesting dynamics is one of the other programs on this chart is called the Wagnereiser Employment Service that program's been around since
1935. it's a new dealal program and under that program it is state employees who actually provide that service. the employment service well that employment service provided by state employees is exactly the courier services that the local we owe aitle One people are providing so just right there you have a lack of integration around how we're even providing basic services to individuals who are coming in our in our offices one last thing I just want to emphasize around the workforce
part of this is that you have what are called oneop career centers sometimes they're called American job centers and what you'll find is that and we're gonna have a chart later on that's demonstrates this is that those physical locations across the state of Arkansas are primarily funded only with the we owe Title I and the Wagnereer dollars. all these other programs you see on this chart are not really participating in any meaningful way in the connection in the service delivery and in the financing of quote unquote a one stop shop.
So to Rachel's point essentially the people who need the education training and are most vulnerable in your state are having to maneuver through3 and4 and5 different systems or programs to avail themselves of the kind of assistance that will help them be upwardly mobile that doesn't even get into the fact that you have your communion technical college system which also gets a variety of federal dollars Perkins and other things to provide education and skills training and so the question becomes how do we better connect in a
meaningful way the quote unquote money that's going for workforce and job training the money that's going to education and job training and the public assistance dollars that are to support people's education and training and workforce journey to upward mo b il ity so that's what I wanted to say before we get into the next slide. and for the purposes of pointing out what's on
Speaker 21
14:29
the left hand here. Those are your human services over here we're talking about Les can I ask you the same thing sorry those microphones are very touchy and some of us are a little
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
14:41
anyway a little less hearing acute I'll put it
Speaker 29
14:45
that way ok so on the left hand side you're going to see a box there you're going to see tanf that's cash assistance medicaid and our kids that's your Medicaid and your CIP programs and you're going to see snap that's food stamps they are all in a system together but you might as well draw a big wall cement iron graded between the public assistance money going to folks and your workforce system. so when we talked before the beginning about all the folks who are on the sidelines
if you want to guide them back into the heart of your communities you have completely separated the systems they are siloed next to each other where you could help the people receiving funds get the assistance they need to get back into the workforce if they need assistance so that's essentially what we really want you to to garner from this chart before we get into the particular details and I'll
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
15:38
add quickly before the next slide you know, think about each of these streams of arrows going down carry their
ownministrative costs and you know the the goal of this study the goal of this work is to help people get into the workforce but there are also significant dollars that get diverted to administrative costs that are duplicative and we'll talk more about that that could be going to help people with training funding training or service s that instead are caught up in administration. so we'll get to that later. the next slide
Mason will start with more what Les was talking about that iron wall and what we observed in our site visits this starts the portion of the presentation where we talk about our research and site visits and what we have observed about silos to start with. so the first
Speaker 32
16:32
thing I want to mention and and Rachel Lesson I feel very strongly about this is all
Speaker 15
16:37
of our work this is not an indictment on the people who are actually working in the system who are working in agencies and who are providing services because they are doing so under
the culture and under the organizations and under the structures of which they've been handed so we want to make sure that we give you that caveat that none of this is a criticism in fact one of the things I wanted to mention on this about this slide is we were at one parti Rachel and I were interviewing one particular group of individuals at one stop and one of the things we did at the beginning of our interviews we said hey kind of keep in the back of your mind our last question that we're going to get to is if you could wave a magic wand, if you had a wish list what would it be? and what we heard at one of our
very first onestop visit was we want to be part of the same team and when we heard that we had a very robust conversation for about 10 or 15 minutes and it was very clear to us that a lot of people that are frustrated about the current situation or the workers in the ss the systems and in these silos themselves they would like to be part of the same team and that's what they asked us to help them with and so the reality is is that customers of these programs are stuck in these silos and that's
actually the great tragedy of all of this as I mentioned already what are called oneop centers under the workforce innovation Opportunity Act here in Arkansas are essentially being primarily funded through WOa Title I and Wagnereiser Employment Service it's a very limited sort of look at what a one stop center is and in fact in the couple of centers that we visited a number of individuals who are primarily there just to apply for unemployment insurance. while unemployment insurance can be applied for virtually
through the internet, through telephone and so essentially you have people coming in just saying how do I apply for unemployment and they try to divert them to discussions around workforce or other things but a onetop center in Arkansas is not this diverse set of programs being funded from different kinds of of the programs you saw in the chart where an individual can afford themselves an array of assistants that get them on that workforce path and so essentially if you're an individual with a disability
if you're an individual who is primary motivation to showing up at an office is to apply for public assistance or if you're somebody who just wants to know skills upgrading you're going through other different doors you're either going through a public assistance human services door you're going to a community and technical college you might be going to a onetop center but you have to figure out which of these quote unquote systems or programs am I going to to actually avail myself of service and then it's
luck of the draw. If I end up in one through one of these doors my opportunity of trying to access the other doors become very challenging and one of the things we heard in all of our interviews whether they were human services interviews or workforce services interviews was oncece I go through that door my connection between the public assistance side and the workforce side is basically nonexistent. in fact we heard very loud and clearly that they are not really have an opportunity to talk to each
other to do even basic referrals and and unless you knew somebody from a professional connection you didn't even know who to call and the other agency so we were very concerned about that fact that there's absolutely between the public assistance human services side and the workforce side and absolute disconnect and lack of any opportunity for individuals who are asking for help to get connected to all of that and so the results are really that customers who need an array of these services are not
able to get them and they're therefore what's really important is their access to upward mobility is extremely limited so to try to solve the kinds of problems like labor force participation you don't have the system tools as a legislative body for that challenge to be well done and so the risk really is is that you do not have a comprehensive workforce system in Arkansas and so you your ability to again
address labor force participation upward mobility, skills upgrading attracting businesses into Arkansas because you have an educated and skilled workforce all of those kinds of issues that you're going to want to try to involve yourself in dealing with are going to be very limited. you real quick about
Speaker 16
21:15
the employer side having to deal with silos that's thank you thank you Rachel for
Speaker 18
21:20
for bringing that up that's the other side of it we
Speaker 15
21:24
often talk about the customers as the job
seeker worker student customer but on the business side which in some people argue is the primary customer without the jobs we don't have the ability to connect people into upward mobility what this does is think if you're a business in any geography in Arkansasssentially what's happening is I may get called by the we owa person. I may get called by the Wagner Pieser an unemployment insurance people. the community college is calling me the human services is calling me and now with work
requirements in the public assistance programs are we gonna have5 and6 and7 and 8 different people calling a business trying to get them to connect in some way with helping employ people and often these are the same people the workers are we're calling businesses5 and6 and7 times to try to employ the same person who's come into our different silo programs and so there's a real opportunity here in what we're going to be presenting a solutions to really have more of
a I'll call it a consolidated or centralized way we work with businesses so that we're being very strategic in how we upskill people and how we get them connected to the jobs that are available in a number of industries. and now you may be saying I'm
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
22:47
here to work on workforce. why do they keep talking about public assistance programs and because there's you'll you'll see later we're gonna do a side by side of the the federal and state monies but mostly federal monies that fund our workforce programs and then that fund our
social safety net programs and the social safety net programs far outweigh what we spend on workforce training and we really view our our human services our social services should be work supports you have childcare as a work support to help people get back into the workforce. all of this should help people on a path to work because we know that work is correlated with better family formation if somebody's working their physical health, their mental health are all
better. many studies across time across all ideologies show this about work so we're we're talking about human services because it it these services are work supports and less is gonna talk about what we saw when we went into county offices and again give this story of how great some of these workers are that we met the people working on this in your state really care about the people that they're serving but the the structure that we
showed earlier is not focused around a core culture of work from what we observe so less yeah
Speaker 21
24:08
so your human services are really good at enrollment. so you have over a
Speaker 29
24:12
million people coming in to access Arkansas to apply for medicaid. you have nearly400,000 people on food stamps and that's what the frontline caseworkers that's what their job is it is to enroll to check for eligibility so when we went on the ground and we asked those frontline caseworkers ok you do a 10 minute phone interview you get on the line what happens if that
person wants to advance in their career? what happens if that individual needs access to childcare in order to advance in their career. and the frontline caseworkers in two instances began to cry because they did not have the tools at their disposal to help the vulnerable person their neighbor in their community get the help they needed they didn't have they couldn't connect them to child care they had to google for them. They didn't have access to housing services and they definitely didn't have access to anything to help them get back into work and so two
things we heard from the frontline workers was an air of frustration of inevitability. these are people who genuinely care about their neighbors and they don't feel like they have the tools and the tool books in their toolbox to actually help them and the second thing we heard constantly is I google. I google ok is there a homeless shelter you can go to? I google where's the closest community college there's nothing there's they don't have the tools in their system to say ok here you're automatically enrolled in this workforce
Speaker 21
25:35
program that is available down the street show up on Monday Now
Speaker 29
25:39
they do have access to snappy andta but they make the referral they have no idea if the individual shows up it just pings back against the airri system and three months later they're cut off from benefits if they don't happen to enroll ll and again the people who are connected to snap ENT the smallest of the workforce programs in your state is less than 1% of snap enrollees so it's not a workforce program you guys have an enrollment program and only for a few programsanfsnap medicaid
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
26:10
and as you can see at the bottom this is a a critical risk in the coming year or two because there will be Medicaid work requirements which we know Arkansas applied for a waiver and try and got off the ground and tried before and so you have back end systems that are ready so that's good news you have good eligibility and data systems ready but at the human level what happens if somebody on medicaid says all right I'm going to be subjected to this new work requirement but I don't
have the skills or you know that I I need help finding a job where is that referral happening? how do they get connected to the workforce training and if they don't then you run the risk of them just falling off the rolls if they don't get a job and so that's not a good outcome for anyone and so this is a big risk over the coming years as work requirements get implemented. umex we're gonna talk about inefficiencies that are just
baked into the siloed system and when we talk about inefficiencies we're we're talking largely about therative duplicity so mason so again on the
Speaker 32
27:20
workforce side we have a caveat that while you know it's hard to quantify exactly what this
Speaker 15
27:26
these inefficiencies look like. I would guess that it is probably in the millions of dollars you'd need to do a forensic audit to actually get a specific number but we did look at some just some interesting data points that you'll see on your
slide. So for programme year 24 Arkansas had an allotment of 14.8 million in WOaitle I dollars again these are the dollars that primarily go locally to the 10 local workforce boards the data we were provided showed that of that 14.8 million only 1,27 3 people were served and again for that 14.8 million only $1.7 million was spent on training in fact I always say if you've heard about the workforce Pell
program which is going to be effective in July that WIOa is the supposedly the job training funding and always historically has been and yet so little money goes to training that Congress has come along and created workforcee now to hopefully help get people trained now people may ask so if 1.7 out of 14.8 was spent on training where's the other money going and that's really where it goes to physical infrastructure
staffing administrative costs and the other kinds of things that we're going to talk to you about with in terms of solutions the state also received another5 million dollars for the Wagnereer employment services program so again the impact of this just looking at these programs this isn't the entire map that we showed you earlier that you can see that as federal constraints funding constraints grow. you don't have any money to actually operationalize helping serving people because so much of it is
just trying to keep our doors open and provide basic services to people.
Speaker 21
29:23
and now we're gonna focus in on the human services so you're snappy and tea dollars are largely going to your community colleges you're kind of
Speaker 29
29:30
double funding there. two lowincome people who are attending your community colleges but that's where the funds are going and a large amount of what you're spending via Tannf which is the the block grant that's given to you is directly going to subgrantees so it's not
funding participants cash benefits or training there either so again on the human services side even the money that is going towards employment and training is going towards infrastructure and not necessarily direct training provision. So on the human services you're leaking funds from administration that could be serving beneficiaries and as especially as you implement work requirements with the vast number vast percentages of folks who are in your human services
who will be expected to return to work those who need extra assistance won't find it. and I put
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
30:25
a point on there that as we looked at the list of you know providers grantees who are receiving these tta of dollars and these snappy and t dollars we are not passing judgment on who these providers are. They all seem to provide you know, good services and we didn't do an audit of each individual our point we're trying to make there is there isn't a statewide strategy when you look across you know the
snap Eentt training the weoa training the tanF training that's going on the wrapround service s they're all being administered and they're in their pieces without an overarching whole state strategy on how these dollars are being spent so that they can be spent wisely on you know the populations that really need the training the jobs that are open in your state you know there isn't even a side by side analysis thereof these are the jobs that really need to be filled in Arkansas and how are we training people to fill those jobs with all of these federal
dollars that are coming down in their different streams all right mason's gonna talk about this is a map of the physical location so the light blue dot are the DHS county offices the stars are the different one stop job centers and then the red are community colleges so one add on to what Rachel
Speaker 15
31:44
said too is when we went to local areas and asked what are
you actually with the $1.7 million essentially what training is occurring and really the only thing that was really happening was Cdl truck driver training that was by farm primarily the only training that was happening and my guess is because you have providers of that training that are referring people directly to those onestop centers for that training but if you're in a state that has diverse number of industries which you do you have healthcare you have manufacturing you have all these
other kinds of industries not that Cdl is necessarily a bad training avenue but when it's the only with limited training dollars and only being the only training people are getting you can see here you're very limited in helping impact and upskilling people in a variety of of industries across Arkansas. Now what this map I think the primary takeaway I'd like you all to have on this is if I'm in a poor county or I'm a vulnerable individual, what office is my only option or what am I gonna go to first and the
argument we make in with this map is that again I've I've told you that the idea of oneop centers or anything but because they're very limited in their footprint and limited in what services they actually and what partners are actually involved but if you look at this map, the message we send most Arkans as s is if you need help go to the welfare office. that's the message this sends so we want you to just really understand what that physical
impro footprint looks like throughout Arkansas and that what really becomes important you're gonna again hear from us on some solution areas this is why we really talk about how do we bring these infrastructures together in a much more comprehensive way to be workforce and cult culturally organizationally workforce focus so that you send the right kind of message to people when they need assistance in any county in Arkansas the next two slides we went
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
33:55
through these aren't obviously not all of the programs but key programs so you can kind of see you know the there's different we'll produce a final report at the end of the month where we'll have more details and explain what these numbers you know do a little analysis of what they mean. you've got a state fisc fiscal year that's different than the federal fiscal year so you know picking state versus federal dollars you know that all comes in about the same but um'm just a little bit about that analysis on these
numbers but we we chose fiscal years here just to give you an idea of what a year looks like and this first slide is are the workforce dollars and the workforce participants much of which we talked about but we wanted you to have just a a visual snapshot of what that spending looks like and before I go to human services mason do you want to say
Speaker 18
34:49
anything about the other than just again reemphasizes that the idea that
Speaker 15
34:53
WOa is the workforce system shows you that
really WIOa is but one of a small program in a myriad of programs and dollars that the state of Arkansas is receiving to help people with upskilling and training and and upward mobility and then this next slide is
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
35:10
the human services and you see the amount of money spent you know dwarfs what is spent on that the workforce training. I mean we're close to $10 billion spent on human services largely from federal dollars. and again we're comparing billions here on this slide to
Speaker 29
35:28
the millions on the previous slide but also like to highlight at the top thatsnapmployment and training is about5 million dollars so there's just not a lot of funds going towards workforce altogether a lot of the focus is distribution of benefits right so that concludes kind of our analysis
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
35:47
we'll have much more in our final report you know if you have feedback of things you want to see in that final report we have you know two weeks left until we we finish the writing of that
but now we're going to go into our suggestions on what to do next. So mason's gonna give an overview of how we think you can create
Speaker 33
36:08
a one door to work keyy emphasis not on the
Speaker 15
36:13
door but on the two work part of that we're recommending looking at this in three buckets one is what is your administrative consolidated administrative structure how do you organize your programs in the state of Arkansas and who sits together and what does that footprint look
like. Then you have service delivery and we have three different areas we're going to discuss with you one is what we're calling regional alignment. in other words what does that physical infrastructure and virtual infrastructure look like how do people access it how do we organize ourselves regionally Second is integrated eligibility and intake and third is how do we have integrated case management and then number3, the third big bucket is integrated finances how do we have some kind of
statewide cost allocation model which appropriately and is federally approved in how you bill and charge each of these programs silos at the federal level but at the same time having a single way of doing it across the entire state versus 10 different ways in the workforce system and in human services has its own cost allocation that it's doing and billing of the federal government and it's kind of all over the place and really the idea of the integrated finances is how do you support a system approach
and not a program by program approach So when you go to the integrated administrative structure how do we get there how do we how do we create this we're recommending sort of some broad parameters here Number one is we do believe on the legislative side that you could consolidate a into a state workforce agency including the public appropriate public assistance programs into that and that it really creates a
culture of work around all of these programs and that you would provide a transition with data collection in 2026 moved toward 2027 is kind of a key start date July 1 and then obviously there would be transition in that there's legislative and executive opportunities here around the governor's workforce cabinet and legislators working together to develop and implement a plan to have a single administrative agency
focused on work including a plan for physical location integration now we showed you the map of Arkansas the reason organizing these programs into a consolidated agency is because then all of a sudden all of those physical locations that now are sitting at separate agencies or with separate programs now I'll become the footprint for a single administrative workforce agency of which people no matter what county you're in no matter which of those buildings you're in and
by the way there's also savings in that because you have probably in many counties 2 and3 buildings sitting next to each other kind of all doing the same thing but now you've got this footprint that is providing services with a consolidated agency and then not to get too far in the weeds but we can work with the executive branch right now on state planning and waivers the federal government to Rachel's point is looking for states to be innovative to ask for waivers of current law and regulations
and we have a methodology that we've developed our team has to provide states with right now and over the next60 to90 days with the opportunity of asking for a waiver package that would free up Arkansas to also be able to start moving it on this on executive branch side absent any legislation that would pass. So then in terms of an integrated service delivery the regional approach we believe
if any if you do pass any legislation you would designate Arkansas as a what's called a single state area a workforce area and that provide assurances that all regions of the state will receive appropriate resource allocations I know that there's always concerns especially with rural regions of a state are we going to get our fair share of the dollars. I think that could absolutely be something that the legislature has some kind of hold harmless provision or something to assure that that happens I think that you
could also fund a transition process to consolidate physical locations and transition staff as needed and then on the executive branch side I've already mentioned the waiver package. there's something called planning regions with waivers and again we have what we believe is a map for state working with states on right now
Speaker 13
41:02
kind of creating integrated service delivery through state planning state plans updates and waiver packages.
Speaker 29
41:13
so the second part of service delivery is ensuring that the customer intake and eligibility isn't a single eligibility division you do have a very good eligibility division in human services it's called your Ariym. This is where someone who who's coming in for food stamps or medicaid or Tanf. they go through a single eligibility process but guess what if they want to go to any workforce system where they need any other work supports say they are on food stamps but they have a child under ive and they need access to WI that's a completely different
system that's a different application form if they want to go to a community college it's a different system it's a different application form if they want to go to the weoa down the street it's a different physical location a different application form and it's going to take them time it becomes a full time job to navigate the Arkansas system so we're looking at a single eligibility system not only for the individual who's coming through the door who's ultimately the same family need but also for you so that you know who is in each of your programs you should know we
ja ne Doe is in our workforce system. She is receiving food stamps. she is receiving medicaid she s receiving whichx she's receiving childcare herr mother is incarcerated. we need to know every single Arkansas that that person Arkansas program that that person is receiving so in enacting legislation you can require this new agency to utilize the launch program that you is already under development in Arkansas and ivy form which is also under development and close to being available to
train staff on common intake forms executively you could also implement a statewide master client index number. there is a master client index number in areas but it doesn't translate to the other agencies so to know the person in front of you you should you should be able to id ent ify them not by their address but by the number across every program and in this integrated workforces even on the human services side you should know if someone's both on snap and they need access to ick if they need
access to lie heap if they need access to childcare and if they need access to workforce programs we have to look at the vulnerable person in front of us and look at the pathway back into work and say all right we're going to give you all the work supports you need and then we're going to hold you accountable to moving back into self sufficiency this is a long term partnership with this individual in front of us. and so part of that long term partnership between this new agency that cons it this new consolidated agency and the
individual is case management. Like I said before you have a great enrollment eligibility checking system that's not case management Case management looks at the individual and says in three months will you be back in work and how do we track that? how do we follow you so that you're having the same conversation with the same person. you have a great foundation here with Hopehub it's one of the few systems across the nation that I really see being a best in class case management system and it's
deployed now I believe in 19 counties and so that's a great base for active case management that track s the individual long term and is able to see are there are they moving from radical instability as in they can't provide kids food for their kids to self sufficiency in 13 categories over the long term so you have a great foundation in something like Hopehu. and the key here is you're going to need to be able to track outcomes as work requirements are implemented the last thing work requirements
are incredible tool for moving people back into your workforce system. but the last thing you'd want is for someone to come to the state and say work requirements just pushed a bunch of people off our programs into poverty No if you actually are tracking folks long term you will be able to see when their incomes double and triple. you'll be able to see when they move into employer sponsored insurance you'll be able to see when you finally are able to put a wedge and stop and intergenerational poverty and see people move from generations on the rolls to generations of
flourishing so case management and tracking outcomes are incredibly important parts of revolution in your poverty program. and then
Speaker 15
45:33
and then on integrated finances again not to get too far into the the weeds of of how money works in government. but we do believe there is a series of executive and legislative actions that could occur first would be that the governor's workforce cabinet assess agency expenditures
and develop some type of asset map that could eliminate inefficiencies for instance look at what is the physical footprint of all of these programs and is there opportunities to either in state owned or leased buildings vacate those and and consolidate staff into more efficient physical locations that would be an example they could then make recommendations to the legislature to align appropriations toward that
we also believe that and we're having some initial discussions with some friends at the office of management andudget around appetite for what's called a new approved cost allocation model across these programs and we do believe there is an opportunity for states to start to say we need this in order to build an actual workforce system and then as part of that we would strongly urge that the executive branch and legislature work together to try to come up with an
integrated cost allocation model and then also obviously you would align your state appropriations toward that integrated cost allocation model and then again real quickly the importance of the cost allocation model is this I always tell people one of the big differences again you you heard me talk about Utah when I was here in august If you walk into a quote unquote one stop in Utah and ask a worker how are you paid for? what program do you work for? They could not give you the
answer to that question because all of those programme dollars are blended behind the scenes to fund that individual's case management or whatever they're doing for the agency where if you go into a location here in Arkansas and ask somebody what program do you work for? what pays your salary they can tell you I'm a we owa person I'm a Wagnereer person, I'm a tanf person. and so what happens is by not having blended funding cost allocation behind the scenes it perpetuates this program by program approach because it's
the easiest way to figure out oh this is what we build the federal Department of Labor this is what we bill healthal and human services for at the federal level because that's just tanf and this is weoa in Utah what they do without getting again too far into the weeds as they have what's called a random moment time sample model where each and everyday workers of of the agency the consolidated agency get an email and it asks them what are you working on at this moment in time. This is an approved cost allocation model that Utah has had since the late 1990ss
essentially what it does is you have a staff at the consolidated agency level who take all those what are called random moment time sampling strikes and they look at and then build the the federal programs or the state programs appropriately based upon what percentage of the person's time was actually working on that program. so you'll see again if you get into the weeds of this when you start looking at what programs are s are are billed the most
this becomes the importance of why the workforce parts of these public assistance programs must be part of a discussion of how do we have a consolidated work approach in the state of Arkansas because just on a pure resource basis public assistance programs are resourced at a much larger level than quote unquote workforce programs or resource and if you do not include them in your mix of cost allocation and how we help people become upwardly mobile you just miss out on a lot of op
opportunity it's a very limited approach and again my argument is those challenges that Rachel talked about at the beginning of our presentation you'll never make a dent in them you can't improve labor force partic participation by say 1 or 2% because you don't have the system you don't have the strategies and you don't have the funding in place by which to dramatically address those so to
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
49:58
summarize this you know why are these three buckets that
we just talked about a solutions what what's the there there so why why do an integrated administrative structure why you you might be thinking this is this is hard work to do it's important because it creates that statewide workforce strategy across all your programs, everybody's working on the same team and the the people the frontline workers helping people know that there is a strategy that's geared toward work so you have a statewide workforce strategy the
second pillar that was about the integrated eligibility integrated casework that makes every program a wrapround work support for those who can work and that is a critical culture shift and thirdly that cost allocation model that Mason just talked about doesn't just make it easier and more cost effective to report to the feds how you're spending federal dollars but it stops that administrative leaking that every arrow that you saw coming down from
federal grants that has administrative costs to it you stop losing that the physical locations that cost money to keep up you stop losing those administrative millions and that money is then helping people instead of keeping the administration of the programmes going which is the ultimate goal of these programs is to go to training people and helping people. and so we did just a future state example of how could a new
structure look that's different from that first slide. So if you decided you wanted to go big and you integrate your human services and your workforce services together and you created a new you'll see there in the middle new Arkansas department of Workforce Services AdWs that has a single administrative reporting structure that's that cost of allocation model back to the feds and one workfirst one stop system that has integrated eligibility case
management that's what's in those boxes for the individual you look at you know the bottom is the yellow that's the families and individuals that need assistance they're going through that one system to get what they need and and that one workfoed culture so this you know we we know that this is a lot of undertaking and there will be more details in the report to come questions you know additions additional
information you all want but this is what a future state could look like mason Lest did you want to add anything on that before I say a final word and we open
Speaker 15
52:45
up to Q&A. I just add one thing about this is if you have this integrated workforce services department the state of Arkansas now has this three le gg ed stool of economic development workforce development education that is more streamlined and can work together for business attraction into the state of Arkansas for small business growth and development in the state of
Arkansas for ensuring that your supply of labor is better aligned to your demand for labor and what it does is it really makes it gives the tools to you as a legislature and to the governor frankly to have an integrated workforce integrated economic development integrated education working as three legs of that stool to build the economy and the growth of Arkansas and the last thing
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
53:31
I would say is that this creates a more nimble system you know, I
think theOVID crisis showed all the states that in in this day and age lots of crises that we can't anticipate come along and I will tell you that you know we we base this off of Utah's similar model and why we did that is because we saw Utah responded the quickest to mass unemployment they quickly reemployed people because they had a nimble system they could reach for staff resources across the state to call everybody who is unemployed and say how do we get you back
to work after this crisis hit and you know we don't know what a future crisis could look like we're you know looking at how AIs radically shifting the labor force, how Arkansas needs to be competitive in drawing employers for new workforce into the state and we just believee from what we see empirically out of Utah that a state that's able to act nimbly with a statewide strategy is able to respond to the future. so with that that is our presentation for you
all again the the final report coming out at the end of the month with lots of details but we'd love to open it up for questions or discussion right thank you so
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
54:55
much as I will just one quick question to start with I did have someone ask on the number that you had in medicaid where
did we derive that number do you guys remember where we got that number for the 1 million?
Speaker 7
55:06
Yes that was the last fiscal year annual report. OK so that that included the
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
55:15
my brains just let me the work the private option of the folks that are on this medicaid expansion population as well it was those both populations to combine, correct? off the top of my
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
55:26
head it was a little over700,000 in traditional medicaid and a little over300,000 in expansion population yeah so we just expand that OK I just had someone ask me that question wanted to clarify
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
55:36
that so when we're looking at this so I
know some folks that are very concerned about things fiscally so you would say we're not we're
not asking to spend any more money we're actually just taking the money that we currently have using it much more wisely and doing it to get it to people and get to training instead of spending it wasting it on administration or buildings or whatever it may be to make
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
56:00
that happen that's right mason can talk about initially you know this was not the goal but the outcome in Utah the savings that they saw so we're always
Speaker 15
56:09
hesitant to give numbers to this and that sort of thing but just to give you one idea
within one year back in 19971998 in thosele dollars the state of Utah saved about5 million dollars in one year within about three years it was about 11 million their appropriation for these programs is about $11 million lower now to be honest, some of those people would might argue well some of those savings are federal programs and such but what it allows you to do actually is you still maintain your level of federal appropriations because you're either formula funded by the federal government or you're receiving a tann of
block grant or whatever the case might be but what it does is it allows you to take those savings and pour them into more intensive services for individuals that are harder to employ and to Rachel's point with artificial intelligence coming and all of us trying to kind of figure out what that means it's really gonna afford you potentially opportunities to take that money that's leaking now in administrative inefficiencies and more directly targeted to initiatives like
helping people with artificial intelligence for their jobs and maybe or making job shifts depending on whether their job andries is being impacted by AI etc. so that's why we see this is so critical is that it does 100% I believe there would be a fairly significant cost savings you would see easily within the first5 years that would allow you to pour more money into
Speaker 57
57:43
training or other kinds of services for individuals so just another quick question
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
57:50
I've got since haven't no one else has lit up yet. I'll take advantage of the opportunity. the case manager, so the case managers are they in Utah or would they be or the program that we're looking at here is the financed through the workforce department that we're setting up is that how the case managers
Speaker 15
58:09
are financed so you have integrated case management system in Utah where all of these programs are done through one case management system so number one to remember is a vulnerable individual isn't telling their story3 and4 and5
times to3 and4 and5 different people being tracked3 and4 or5 different ways it is a single story told a single time managed by a single individual or a team of individuals at the workforce agency and then those individuals again do not know what program is funding them because you have the cost allocation model that decides what percentage of their funding is going to that so I literally when I walk in a one stop in Utah and it is a true one stop you have one location to go to for everything in Utah not3 and4 and5 like you do in
Arkansas. but in addition, those individuals are funded by the array of programs and they identify themselves as employment counselors not as a we owa worker or a Wagnerpaer worker. They are an employment counselor and they can help those individuals with whatever service they're intake into whatever services those individuals need whether they be financial assistant whether it being workforce training whether it be unemployment insurance whatever the case might be thank you. I
Speaker 13
59:13
have someone has a question before we get to that we'll quickly tell the difference on how this will make
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
59:24
it easier for business in Arkansas that needs to find some employees can you kind of dig in that just a little bit deeper now a little more business friendly
Speaker 15
59:32
than what we have currently absolutely so I'll just give you a simplistic argument that you have 10 local workforce development areas so if I'm a business that has a statewide presence who do I talk to? Do I have to talk to 10 different individual workforce areas we're seeing this in a number of states by the way that if I'm a business just navigating what's the workforce system now which is WOa and and
other programs I have to I have to figure out in 10 different ways how I even engage that system. never mind the fact that the community and technical colleges all have business engagement work that they do trying to work with businesses to whether they even get a federal discretionary grant or not you have now work requirements in these other human services programs so are they going to also be hitting up businesses or do they then to Rachel's point, do they refer them over to
workforce system that's got 10 different areas and and other programs and such so this actually provides businesses with a rational intake common intake of their own because you again in you looking at the Utah example you have a what I would call a centralized business unit that all of these programs then feed into so now you're dealing with business not on a program by program basis or case by case basis but in a very comprehensive strategic way where you're now able to deploy
the array of resource s to help individuals get trained and get upskilled to support those businesses in their growth. super. so if somebody would say that what we're doing now
Speaker 58
1:01:04
is more locally based I wouldu you know,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:01:07
I would say that I have a small county that has one office right the DHS office so and they're really very limited to what they can offer for any training so would you say that actually doing this will give our our our small rural areas and the folks that live there more opportunities to get some
training out there as as what we have
Speaker 15
1:01:30
now absolutely sopresentative Bentley giving your example where you are representing a county with only a human services office if you have an integrated administrative structure with all of the programs under the same umbrella you're now doing an a look at your physical infrastructure all of a sudden I now turn that humans services office into a department of workforceervices office where an individual's coming in for whatever help they might need and if human services is appropriate that's what they
get. Iforkforce services is immediately appropriate that's what they get but what they get is what is your situation what is going to help you become self sufficient and upwardly mobile and then we'll figure out on the back end on our own what what's actually paying for that it's about the services not about the
Speaker 45
1:02:13
program they're applying for add quickly to that on the the rural
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:02:17
areas that in some of our interviews one of the the comments we heard was well in some of these rural areas there are no jobs was a comment so these human
services offices can't refer people to jobs because there are no jobs and it was sticking in a in a county basis and so if that truly is the scenario thinking through art then how do we have in this statewide strategy maybe there's something virtually we can do or some some you know long term training program or transportation we can you know funds we can help to provide to another county for work because the answer can't be for that individual while the only answer is public assistance for the
rest of their lives and not you know providing for a future so great okpresentative Bec thank
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:03:09
you madam chair my question in the and maybe I mean you mentioned this I think but but I want to to you're talking about cross training these people so that they I I love the idea that they feel like they're in a s they're that they feel like they're in the silo and and you know that's all the answers come from that from that source but
that tends to me and don't wanna be negative about it but it seems like that is a huge hurdle as far as training is concerned because you know you're you're talking about a person who's you might even be struggling a little bit with the thedHS part of the the thing and now you're saying ok by the way we actually gonna do this this and this I think it's a great from the well one of the customers which would be the with the Arkansans that are come for assistance I think it'd be great for them however
I I I really see this as a huge training opport I'm not op well we call it an opportunity right for for these individuals to be able to to do that and I worry about almost like too much you know and and and you're gonna get differences so so it's it's gonna be like a training program that's like southwest Arkansas and northeast Arkansas or whatever and they're gonna have the exact
same skill set the person when you walk into that office will have the exact same skill set giving the exact same our are are there gonna be areas where it's ok well this is kind of what we're doing in the southeast because there's some different job requirements and I mean different requirements for jobs are employment there or whatever and I I it just seems like it's
Speaker 68
1:04:55
almost too much to get your your head around and at
Speaker 32
1:04:59
this point are you talking about the staff themselves yeah great question so in Utah when Utah
Speaker 15
1:05:06
consolidated in 1996 and 1997. this was a big question actually can you have a super worker who knows enough about all these programs to be able to help an individual and really what the answer became was more of upfron t teams of people so what so the thing to remember is a lot of these workers are actually providing the same services but funded through we owaitle I or Wagner Peiser or Tanf so if you look at the actual service provision itself, especially around workforce
services there's a lot of those similarities already happening but they're do happening in the silo programs so you're crosstraing there becomes more about what is our consistent approach to employment services or career services or training. now when it comes to these I would call them categorically eligible programs absolutely you are going to have to have local experts or at least regional experts who are doing potentially eligibility but
this is where the centralized eligibility comes in so the way to think about this is I've got my people in my local offices who are doing my actual services and they're doing a lot of the similar services now only in a silo fash ion and I can cross do any cross training across programs to have a common strategic approach to that across the entire state on eligibility eligibility a way to think about eligibility is eligibility is not the first experience you have when you
walk in the office. Eiggil's done behind the the scenes and in fact in Utah eligibility is all done remotely you don't even sit face to face with an eligibility worker. You sit face to face with the career services or the employment counselor who then takes your information and then helps you work with an eligibility worker to figure out what actually are you eligible for with regard to financial assistance in these other kind of human services programs so yes I'm not I'd be the last one to say that it's not tough work
to integrate agencies integrate service delivery and do this work but when we were in Utah actually a year ago one of their deputy directors used he actually said this he goes, I'm not I'm because we there were people there from a number of states Louisiana Mississippi, Arkansas and other places and he said I'm not gonna tell you that it's not really tough to do this to do this integration. but he said what we always remind ourselves here in Utah is what's really tough is
I'm the single mom with two kids and I got a stroller and I'm trying to walk through a 2 ft snowbank to catch the bus to get to an office and I've got to do that3 and4 different times to get the services I need. and so yes itre representative I would be the last one to say this you've got to do a lot of cross training I can tell you communications is extremely important and a lot of s you know just systems integration and having those champions frankly within these programs be willing to come together and
that was a little bit of the secret sauce of Utah there was a group of us who were wanted to get this right and so you need to find those people too but abs but you can you can actually have upfront teams or sort of generalists that are already doing this work anyway that can be now doing it for a multiple of funding streams and not just their
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:08:34
own another question the ok so I'm gonna shift a little bit and and I might I I envisioned it when when you said this but
may may I I heard it wrong or or but you were talking about you're reducing the trickle down of federal dollars and and thereby reducing federal dollars that that trickle down the the reduction of the in other words you reducing the federal dollars excuse me so more of that would go towards the the the customers and less of it towards what you call administrative costs I believe but the so where's that reduction? Is is it
in manpower is it in I think you mentioned infrastructure at one point some reduction maybe some of the infrastructure cost but what where where is that
Speaker 14
1:09:22
so it's in it's it's in personnel and it's now is anybody gonna get fired? I would say no that's
Speaker 15
1:09:27
not the goal we didn't Utah didn't fire anybody you don't have to fire anybody you can do it through attrition frankly. but let me give you this example Each of these programs has its own regional architecture right and has its own org charts. Well if
I have tanf that has a a regional director over your area and weoa has a regional director and Wagneryer has a regional director and Snap has you know whatever the case might be, whatever the right frame framing of that is the reality is is you don't necessarily save money on the frontline caseworker side of things because you still need all of those people er serving everybody but where you start to see it in savings is in that middle to upper management level when all of a sudden I don't need five different regional administrators. I only need one
I don't need three buildings in in a town I only need one and so you start to see significant savings on on on physical on systems. I don't need three different case management systems. I only need one. I don't need4 different intake systems. I only need one etc. so that's where you see the significant savingssentially most states are paying for the same thing3 dollars and4 and5 different times. that's the easiest way to think about it.
if you were a business I I can tell you right now if any of this was a private business it would have been out of business 20 years ago because there's so much inefficiency built in and I'll say one last thing about this the way to think about the framing of this representative beck is think of the state of Arkansas think of all this workforce system as I like to call it as like a franchise model and I mean that in a literal sense of how a business franchise operates how do you bring together the
integration across the state of the appropriate things that should and a business or a job seeker customer should expect consistent service across the state of Arkansas provided in a very highly efficient way with the ability to have regional variation depending on what is the experience of people within that part of the state that they may come from and there's absolutely an ability to create that franchise model to create that organizational culture and
that's another big important thing to this around the integrated administrative structure is I'd be the last person to say that it's easy you have different organizational cultures around human services programs and the people that work in them and workforce programs and the people that work in them but what you find is that through very smart management and bringing this together you can create your own workforce culture where everybody feels they can participate and that the workers of that agency and the workers of that system then have their contributions they're
making to that overall organizational culture and in the services they're providing to people. one final question
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:12:26
let someone else has a question the the the did do utilize was there
it just seems like there's a lot of experts that need to be sitting at the table and if if I have I'm just gonna throw numbers here if I have 100 people a day coming through my doors and they all need this large group of people that that's not gonna work either the person who
happens to be first in line and get the group of people it's gonna be great but some of the others might wait because that my so my question of that is did you utilize any virtual type like the the people like I might be there talking to this individual but virtually there's a a a a bigger
larger team was that a big part of the savings also or just
Speaker 18
1:13:14
well no again I I I want to push back on the notion that you have to have lots of people because we have all these
programs and now if they're all in one place I gotta to have7 people as part of a team to
Speaker 15
1:13:29
help a person that's really not the case again you have to think about what are the actual services we provide people and they really fall into very I'll call them a small fairly small or or contain number of buckets they're sort of your basic career employment service I help somebody somebody comes in they're like hey I just need help finding a job or I need to apply for unemployment. I'm gonna belo unemployment for a few weeks I need to help get
reemployed. I'm a dislocated worker. I've been laid off. there's sort of those workforce employment services then you have what I'll call a training services bucket. I have somebody who comes in and you know yeah they need to get employed or re e mp lo y ed or they're underemployed they're working multiple part time jobs. I need access to a community college program or some type of training that's going to help me skill up and be now eligible for work and then you have more of the I will call them the intensive public assistance supports where
somebody may also need a longer period of time to engage in those kind of employment services and or training services while they are trying to get skilled up enough at an income level enough to not have to be eligible for those programs anymore so it's not like the services we provide people are like a menu of 14 different things with 14 different individuals who have to have a particular expertise in those things the expertise piece you're talking about is more on the eligible that's why
I was trying to split services from eligibility. The expertise is more on the eligibility side which is each of these a number of these programs have specific eligibility criteria in order to be able to access the funding to help that individual but for the most part it's not like we have these we I need in a rural area 8 different people in order to serve people. I probably only need you know I might only need two or three people upfront to help that person and then I've got this
team behind the scenes virtually of eligibility
Speaker 13
1:15:28
workers who can figure out what is the actual funding stream that can
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:15:32
support that person and that quickly on the
what exists now what we saw in our site visits is when that caseworker needs the team approach for well how do I help this person get childcare or work or you know into a shel a shelter or whatnot they don't have that team as as said they are currently googling or they're like hey I I worked withjoe down the street
so I know I can call him but if I didn't know him personally then I wouldn't know who to call at that workforce office so that currently that team
Speaker 16
1:16:05
doesn't exist now. thank you very much Representativeladyman
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:16:16
thank you madam chairir. I'm over here. I may be covering the same ground that represented beckcoed but you know the Utah program that you talk
about I'm familiar with that. I wouldn't say very familiar but I've talked to people in Utah at different meetings and you know in the rich states poor states they've been number one for like 16 years Arkansas finally hit number 10 and I told them watch out because we're coming after you but this is one of the areas that they just blow everybody away. what I've seen and I don't understand their system or how it works y'all have clarified some of that but but
what I thought is I call it a clearing house so so if I'm needing health services and won't need a job I don't know I have to go to DHS and then I have to go across there in my district there's a DHS regional office. there's a workforce regional office but but we cover what what you're talking about here we cover three of our secretarylevel departments here
and and like you say they are a total silos they don't talk across salo to silo because you've got human services you have workforce services which is part of our department of commerce and then you have education which doesn't talk to anybody else. I mean they're just they're a silo on their own. and how can one person at human services provide just where to go right? If you if I walk in I
need all these things that human services person can only talk to me about what they provide in that department so I I see what you're trying to do here. and I think we could train people upfront to be a clearing house basically you know I work worked for one of the largest corporations in the world and that's the way we did it. like you said if if this was a business we'd have been out of business a long time ago. and even in regional, you
know, I mean we were in like60 countries so you just step that down to go to the region or the country and you get the specialist in that area so I understand what you're trying to do here but you're talking about creating an office of workforce services at the cabinet level Now how do you do that when the experts are going to work in three different cabinetlevel departments how does Utah make that work? That's
Speaker 15
1:19:03
my question so in Utah we had5 separate programs that got merged into a single cabinetle agency there was the Department of Employment Security that was its own cabinetle agency essentially that was Ui and Wagner Pies our unemployment insurance WagnerPiesiser at the time we had the office of Family Support which is actually where I was working that was a sub cabinet agency of the department of humanman Services that's where all the public assistance programs were we had the office of jobb training which at the time was in the economic development agency of Utah at
the time so that got pulled out of that so right there you had three separate agencies coming out of that and then there were a couple of smaller programs the officefice of childcare that was sitting in a different agency and then what was called the turning point program which was sort of helping single moms with kids kind of related to the public assistance programs those with the five separate organizations that all came into a single consolidated ministrative department Utah department of workforceervices so the legislature
basically passed a bill. Now I will tell you at the time it was interesting because we were also going to have vocational rehabilitation which was sitting in the Utah Department of Education that's an interesting story and of itself if I may at the time that was supposed to be part of the department of Workforce Services which they which we took out because the the political pressures were so much at the time you guys understand that well the irony is in 2016 the depar vocational rehabilitation got put into the department of work k f or ce er vi ce s so about 20 years later
and when I asked and talked to Utah about why did it finally happen? there were two things that occurredumber one, the legislature was dealing with financial issues with vocational rehabilitation was not being manned the program was not being managed well but the legislature actually did an audit and they asked how many vocational rehabilitation customers are also Department oforkforce Services customers70% so we're7 out of 10 individuals with disabilities we were telling them go to the department of Education
vocational rehabilitativeervices aggency and go to the department of workforce Services again go through two separate doors to get all the services you need. Well when the legislature saw that they said that's enough we're putting it in and so now vocational rehabilitation is actually in the department of workforce services as well as well as medicaid eligibility and access to housing programs too is that the department of workforceervices and so again it's about what can in every state's different now Louisiana just passed their their legislature passed a bill
last year they're creating what's called Louisiana works they're bringing in all of these programs now they're working on this actually they're they're now in the implementation phase of this this year and so we have another state that's now moved forward on this and there's probably some lessons learned there working with Louisiana coming outu coming out of that that you don't have to rely on 30 years ago in Utah but essentially to answer your question that's essentially what happened was we pulled those through legis through a legislative bill created that
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:22:13
agency yeah yeah I understand that but what I'm talking about just the how would it function and I guess that's a work in progress but if we pull these pieces out of these three different secretaries's departments you you still need there will be people left in these departments that you need to draw on their experience and their knowledge so how does that functionally work and I guess that's just a work in progress like you said states are different yeah so so the idea would
Speaker 32
1:22:39
be you would pull the people out of the
Speaker 15
1:22:43
current agencies that belong that are functionally doing this work. Now an example would be somebody you would not pull into this agency would be somebody in in human services who's working on child welfare so we would recommend that the that program would remain outside of workforce services because it has its own set of issues it's not really workforce focused right so more more of a traditional human service focus. now would there be instances where the workforce services agency needs to work with the humans
absolutely and so what you do is you still might have MOUs or those kinds of things when it makes sense.gain in Utah medicaid the program remains at the department of healthalth but medicaid eligibility is at the department of Workforce Services so still you have the policy and the appropriation coming to the department of health but they have an arrangement with department oforkforce Services where we're doing all the eligibility for Medicaid and that works really well for them and so there are those kinds of arrangements you can create but
but I just want to be clear that we are recommending that the people who are doing tanf case management right now who are doing snap and and snappy and tea case management
Speaker 13
1:23:54
and eligibility would be part of a new department we wouldu they wouldn't be sitting back while we have this new workforce services
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:24:01
well we know that Utah that it's working in Utah and it's been working for many many years if we can just shape that for for our state. I I think it's a really good program so thank you
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:24:15
thank you and real quick on the process the the year before it's implemented in Utah and then now in Louisiana this past year basically created committees of interest so a case management committee a data committee outcomes etc. looking at what does it makes sense to bring into this new agency what is this culture look like building it with existing talent across the agencies that know the programs that know the populations that sit on these committees employ
ers who are really important sit on those committees to shape what that looks like over the year leading up to the implementation thank you thank
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:25:04
youpresentative Representative garner thank you madam chair. actually most most of my questions were answered just now so my question so is it just now Utah that's been doing this for30 years and Louisiana that's just started are there
any other states that are doing it or or have tried to implement some of those things I assume that Utah has kind of made sure that we have all the kinks out of the system but they're also different there's some things that are different in Utah than there are here so how can are there other states that are doing it now and and yeah yeah that's the excite I think that's really the exciting thing it was interesting
Speaker 15
1:25:43
because I I first got to know Rachel and Les right around 2021 when they were doing
some work on this and hearing some things and then I also was getting calls directly from governor's offices coming out of COID and
Speaker 18
1:25:55
I think what essentially happened is for probably 20 years or so kind of the Utah experience was sort of allowed to just well they're different you know they get along
Speaker 15
1:26:06
we don't you know they like everybody gets along in Utah yeah right just ask us BYU fans about Utah fans and vice versa. we have our own sort of rivalries there but coming out ofOId I think
Speaker 18
1:26:18
there was definitely governor's offices especially newly elected governors and others that were saying something's going on there because they're coming out of COVId at a much better rate than than everybody else. I always
Speaker 15
1:26:30
give this anecdote governor Youkin in Virginia where I live his staff called me and governor You can being a businessman said I want to be best in class who's best in class doing this workforce services work and the answer came back what I was told the answer came back was Utah and so actually Virginia in 2022 did some reorganization of their of
their issue they've brought they didn't do the human services piece but they did bring some of the workforce programs that we're sitting in their community college system and in other places and did merge those into what they're calling now Virginiaors is kind of the the nickname of the agency has a much longer official namemployment and Workforcedvancement or something like that. So Virginia in 2022 time frame did do this so I I I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about there are states that have started doing some elements of this since coming out of COVId Lo u is ian a as we've mentioned
last year currently right now s the states that were probably most are kind of on the same time frame right now that we're having discussions is Arkansas Mississippi and West Virginia. Now there's a reason for that this too and that's because last year we almost had federal workforce reform the a stronger workforce for America Act almost it passed the house it got negotiated in the senate and agreed to and was on the floor as part of the continuing resolution a year ago December and then when Elon blew that all
up the whole thing got blown up so we didn't get it but but the reason the states that you're hearing about right now including Arkansas's because we had actually one of the things we worked on kind of quietly was a pilot and demonstration authority in there that would have allowed states like Arkansas there are about 9 states that were in this bucket to be able to basically wave almost everything in WOa and and do what we're suggesting you try to do now under current law and so what we've tried to do is through this invitation for
waivers and other things try to kind of build that that up so yes right now it's a but we're also getting a lot of I have a couple of philanthropic organizations that are talking to me because they're very interested in looking at this from an evaluation standpoint and actually working with some of you and other states and maybe doing some evaluations of as you implement what does that look like what worked what didn't and so there's I was asked to speak to a kind of an informal group of philanthropic organizations right before the
holiday break who really want to know what is this all about and how do we get involved and so there really seems to be a momentum behind this at least in WashingtondC from a number of different kind of organizations and so it really presents states like Arkansas this real opportunity I think to be a laboratory of democracy and really do something that that may work for your population. does that help kind
Speaker 37
1:29:17
of a longwinded question hopefully to to your long winded answer I should say thank you Representative S
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:29:23
sppringer good afternoon thank you madam Chair for allowing me to ask the question the your numbers your key numbers regarding Arkansas workflow was I'm just curious to know whether or not in your final report whether or not you will share some of the key numbers from Utah and then and then tell us how they progressed over the years maybe like when they first started and then where they are today is that something that you all considered to include in your
Speaker 32
1:29:53
report you're giving me work to do over the next two weeks aren't you can I'm already
Speaker 18
1:30:01
I'm already behind in my writing and now I'm getting yeah absolutely I think we we you let us know what you would like to see in that report and we'll do our best to make sure it's in there but if you would like sort of a longer we could probably do an a high level longitudinal look at Utah and and just so you know I also am a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise institute and I've actually published a
Speaker 15
1:30:23
couple of papers on Utah and done a landscape study on these programs all and we can absolutely make those available for
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:30:30
the committee to read this document better don't give you any extra work I'm just curious to know how they've progressed over the years how their numbers have changed based upon the implementation of this model that you're suggesting so that's that's what I'm just curious about you some
Speaker 32
1:30:43
data on the longer term and then ach el actually has some data on the shorter coming you know some of
Speaker 18
1:30:49
the coming out of COID data that really like to see that and
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:30:53
that's you know I think a key thing we talk about studying actual outcomes because what you what you see on this slide aren't outcomes right it's just spending and participants but what we do have readily available now is what those unemployment to reemployment outcomes coming out of covid which put us all every state on the same you know forced unemployment footing so we do have those outcomes that show Utah far above the pack so those we
have right now the other pieces might take us a little more than the the next two weeks we have to finish the report but we can certainly that's something on our list we want to get to is you know to show what what these other kind of numbers look like but as far as jobs and employment outcomes we do have that data now. thank you if you
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:31:43
can just send that to Kate she'll get out to the whole committee for us. thank you. All right. last but definitely not
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
1:31:50
least, Senator Petty. thank you madam chairir. I have two unrelated questions but the the first and I actually
made a note about the restore hope hope hub system I'm assuming that that's not a vibrant enough system to to manage what we're talking about but are there existing systems out there or is this a total customization from the ground up for an Arkansas project like this. Yeah with Hopehub
Speaker 43
1:32:19
one of the key benefits is just the connection so someone comes in you develop
Speaker 29
1:32:25
a work plan with them and that
is what one of the key things that Hopeubs allows is what are your goals? what are the jobs available to you right now? what can you do now? what is your plan for a year from now. And even that beginning work plan which Hopehu allows is a step above anything that most states are doing, much less Arkansas so I think that's the key piece. The second piece it has is the connection not just to the agencies not just OKok around the corner is wick and down the street is your local workforce
onestop agency. It's this is Janet at your local workforce agency. You are already eligible for this program you are getting enrolled on Monday and so those are two incredibly important pieces to case management. So Hopehub has both of those now and is is deployed in 19 counties you could also go a step beyond and do case management beyond that so you have two options in front if you want us to deploy what you have now and to begin to measure the outcomes there and the second is to create something new
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:33:30
and we'd have to double check this but from what we heard from shared servicevices is they have the tools ready for this master client index number which allows the state to track someone across the programs and see you know what what all they're touching as an individual as far as state programs go so that infrastructure appears from our interviews to be already there as well.
Speaker 29
1:33:54
thing'll mention is AR launch which is under development now and allows you I believe it's
underdevelopment so that you're deploying it in your education system so that as individuals Arkansas you track what skills do they have and then match that to the available jobs in Arkansas and so between these three pieces a case management system isn't just one tool it's the between the pieces you've already developed it's probably a braiding of the
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
1:34:23
three. OK. lastst, last question so was intrigued by the the cost allocation method
discussion do you know how they vary from program to program and year to year as far as percentage and I'm just going to make this up let's just say it's 10% in each of the programs or whatever and and next year one of them is 25% or whatever is there much variation and then the the the last follow up to that is if there is a significant amount of variation from year to year and I'm talking about you know the state's fiscal year have you ever seen other states run into limitations
on waitit you can't charge that much admin because all of our people even though they were like you said behind the scenes the vast majority of the work was on one program or the other and so we went over the 10% admin limit or the 15% admin limit that a program might have.
Speaker 18
1:35:23
Yeah, so there's sort of a multitude of ways I can answer and I'll try to be succinct. Number
Speaker 15
1:35:29
one is I could absolutely try to get any questions you
have about year to year from Utah we can contact them and say can you provide us some longitudinal data on what your strikes look like year to year Number 2 is it it's a very vibrant system in that obviously you have appropriations across these programs some much larger than others so for instance tanf obviously is a lot more money thanOAittle One so when I do a random strike and I talked to a
Speaker 18
1:36:06
caseworker and then and let's say they call or I get an email and I'm working with Rachel you know Rachel might be eligible for Title One. she might be a tann of person, she
Speaker 15
1:36:18
might be well if if if she is part of that myriad of things, my understanding is this is very simplistic that they would make she would be a tan of strike because there's more money there. see what I'm saying? Now one of the interesting differences between all states that I know of and Utah is this Wagner piesermployment Services
is actually your most flexible money. it can't pay for training but there's no eligibility requirements to that funding stream. I can serve you I can serve they can serve me can serve anybody no matter what your income level is no matter what so most states use that as their front door program that's the first program that that's that worker is the first one somebody sees physically is that upfront Wagneryer person because it's universal and Utah uses it the opposite
is you see you if somebody's categorically eligible for one or the other better funded programs you're gonna strike that program and then if I'm working with Rachel and she's not eligible for any of the other programs then that becomes the WagnerPpayer strike so actually it's strategically allows you to use your most flexible funding sources to help more people versus I am now using it on the front end insteadad they're using on the back end as sort of their backstop for serving people who aren't categorically eligible for
something else so it's those kind of nuances within their cost allocation model to give them a ton of flexibility. Now in terms of the administrative limits absolutely and they'll talk to you about that we have they're they have to manage their cost allocation just like any other state has to so if they start getting to a point
Speaker 18
1:37:54
and they they'll say this very distinctly if we're bumping up against say an admin cap or or or actual were starting to get short on this money we have to make adjust ment s in terms of who you know just like any other state and
who we can serve and there may be limitations there they typically don't run into that problem though but it is something that they have to manage as well just like any other state thank you and thank you madam chair but if you could
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
1:38:20
provide that to staff about Utah and those two that would be appreciated. great deal. All right well I will say there's been a great session thank you all
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:38:31
again for traveling here to Arkansas to give us this good day. I look forward to the final report in two weeks and really excited about de said do you guys
want to give any final closing statements as we close out the meeting.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:38:44
I just say it's a privilege to be with you all and umm grateful that you are thinking big. I think we're in a moment with so the one big beautiful bill implementation we didn't talk a lot about but this is going to force a lot of changes up on your state administration of programs so you have a lot of provisions in snap and medicaid in that bill and this you know workforce dollars and I think being forward thinking about
creating a holistic system that works is it's huge in the implementation of this because you're your state is going to be implementing a lot of new things over the next two years so you might as well use this moment to really help people get into the workforce to turn some of those numbers on that original slide around and you know have those 200,000 people who are chronically unemployed.hink about what that would do to your culture if they got back into the workforce and the the culture of your state.
So thank you for for this opportunity to present to you all and we are we're here to help and and amongst all these options we provided for you find a find a path forward with you awesome great thank you all so much and we are
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:39:55
adjourned let's do you want to say anything? right for having us thank you
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Presentation of Findings by Georgia Center for Opportunity [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Recommendations by Subcommittee
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - HOSPITAL, MEDICAID, & DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES STUDY SUBCOMMITTEE, Jan 12, 2026 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B- AR Report Initial Presentation | Exhibit | 24 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 17
Speaker 18
Speaker 21
Speaker 29
Speaker 32
Speaker 16
Speaker 33
Speaker 13
Speaker 7
Speaker 57
Speaker 58
Speaker 45
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 68
Speaker 14
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 37
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
Speaker 43