ALC-Hospital, Medicaid, & Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:52
Good afternoon everybody and welcome to our subcommittee on
this is our workforce social services reform subcommittee so we're glad to have everybody here and what we have here with us today is we in order to look at what other states are doing or have done so we can kind of figure out where we want to go on our reform package is to talk to some other folks from other states so Utah some almost 30 years ago was the first and probably only
state in the United States to be able to come up with this conversion and bring the social services and workforce development programs together in a system rather than individual programs so we have invited umgreg Paris and liz Carver to come and speak to us today and they're on Zoom up here and we welcome you both to the to the meeting there are a number of us here and we're all anxious to hear what you
have to say about Utah go ahead can you try unmuting your mic we
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
3:11
cannot hear you is there a spot on your screen to unmute. it looks like he's on in a minute we'll get you
lady while we're waiting I'm gonna recognize Lany Phillips out in the audience today. she is shattering go ahead and stand for us lanny. She's shadowing uhpresentative camemeron Cooper,11th grader from beebe who's interested in politics and political discourse so welcome to have her here with us todaylanny. thank you for being here today and good luck on your future. thanks Lany. are we on yet
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:07
Liz can you say something so we can see if we can hear you Yeah. Yes gosh how about greg oh hey
Speaker 26
4:17
all right we're all we're in sync. Welcome aboard. welcome to Arkansas. thank you for being here just final sound check you can hear me
Speaker 28
4:24
you can quiz great well thank you for having us the first thing we'd want to kick off we just want to make sure do you have a
Speaker 31
4:38
a hard copy or a virtual copy on your screens we we want to start off with a very quick overview of our department we we had sent ahead of time a document that we have
Speaker 32
4:48
called an overview of services. I think we've got that
Speaker 30
4:52
we have a hard copy from that we'll speak from that very briefly
Speaker 31
4:55
and then we've kind of prepared a a a few topics but please at any point just interrupt let's take this where you want to go to make it most helpful for you as the senator said our department was formed officially launched
Speaker 30
5:08
July1,1997 so we are what 28 years and almost 3 months old and Liz and I have been here essentially from the very beginning so we've seen some very good things and some things that I think we we probably class ified we didn't get it right the first time
Speaker 31
5:22
but we just keep trying so if you're telling me that you have a a hard copy of the front page the front side of that document lists some basic tenants we
Speaker 30
5:31
call them cornerstones by which we operate you can see them in the upper left we are everything we do is through the lens of an
employment focus that's part of the integration that exists here when you apply for I mean we start with our URl jobs.utah.g gov when you come into one of our brick and mortar structures our American job centers they are employment focused when you are pursuing what we would call we call it temporary assistance any of our supportive service programs the the tanna program Medicaid Snap. there is a an employment focus when you're bringing when you're bringing verifications to to maintain eligibility for these
programs you're greeted by an employment counselor who screens and asks if there are employment assistance opportunities available to you so on the very front page of there you can see we we even leave when we talk about our overview of services with our workforce development division or our workforce development overview we have more than30 employment centers statewide that are certified that go through the the certification process with our workforce board we can dive into that if you so desire we have some standalone sites that only house our
vocational rehabilitation program that joined us over time we have were available we have folded our vocational rehabilitation into our what we call employment centers here AJCs so that we don't have standalone sites that are not able to be certified or affiliate sites we have a strong connection to our employers both virtually and with local contacts on the ground throughout the state just on the backside of the page you can see that we've highlighted some of our public
facing divisions or public facing access points before I dive into those, I think it goes without saying all of this is supported with centralized not necessarily brick and mortar centralized but centralized what we call backbone support whether it's our fiscal or our finance division our facilities information security information our our legal team our contracts team but on the backside we have what do we have 8 listed divisions our eligibility
services division that was our first foray into taking what had been individualized work being performed under one umbrella of workforce services but it was there were still some sovereignty and we rolled into a statewide
Speaker 31
8:00
system, a statewide telephone system, a statewide imaging system, a statewide computer system
Speaker 30
8:06
for the first time in 2009 so we you know it's about halfway through our tenure
and that was a good example of some lessons learned that we can pass along and if you're going to be building a structure or a a foundation from the ground up. we had some recruitment some internal recruitment where we learned some lessons about just the significance or how significant a role the leaders play in in the the whole your whole organizational structure our housing and community development division was in another entity and it joined us in 201el and then the final thing I would say is on the left
side of that page there you can see the Utah State office of rehabilitation joined us by legislative fiat in 2016. This is the division that houses our deaf and blind services our vocational rehabilitation program and our disability determination services.
Speaker 31
9:01
The one thing I would say about vocational rehabilitation. it was considered for inclusion
Speaker 30
9:08
at day one when we formed in 1990 the legislation began in 1996. We officially flipped our switch on
July197 and again some lessons learned there wasn't a political will at the time for vocational rehabilitation and so that that's kind of one of the talking points that Liz and I like to use when we talk about you know what's what what is needed obviouslybviously political will and that is a great example of it wasn't there at the time and so we didn't force something the state of Utah did not force something. it wasn't ready for. We were already undertaking the formation of five agencies coming together to blend at the time what was commonly referred to as welfare work and welfare programs
so that that's just kind of highle overview of what we have under our umbrella if I translated that we have all the the snap the childcare medicaid, BLS programs unemployment insurance that's a that's a pretty snazzy wind that brings wage data with us. Wage data is like a golden nugget. it allows us to do a lot of research internally on our own programs and our own those we serve we have a housing and community development division which is a lot of outward contracting for
services in communities I would say that at the height of the recession just our support of service programs we don't have a way to quantify the impact of communitybased assistance. If I give a a million dollars grant to a community to put in roads and infrastructure so the community can grow. What I'm about to tell you doesn't even include something like that at the height of COVID we had about one out of a little over4 1 4.5 Uahns were flowing through our
system through these various divisions here. I think a recent checklist and I just looked into it was a little over 1 out of 9 so that's a we we still believe we have a very large footprint of job seekers of families of children that flow through one or more of our what we would call computerbased case managed or self-directed programs li z anything you want to add before you kind of
Speaker 31
11:16
jump into the next set of questions got it
Speaker 30
11:23
I think we'd start off with and met with some federal officials this week and again they used the language one door and I apologize I just let me get that out of my system. We we don't speak in one door language. We never have in the 28 years three months we've been alive that's a great marketing campaign we appreciate the free marketing that's been bestowed upon us across the nation but we don't there are wrongdoors we we have a few so we don't we don't necessarily utilize the language
one door. We, we, our goal is to put the the the the citizens of Utah in the center of what we do and then figure out how to eliminate barriers to our services and there and there are barriers because the we we can do a lot at a local level but the federal programs don't always play well with one another but the reason we can do what we doliz if you want to talk about our I think everyone knows it but just so we have a stable platform will you talk
Speaker 27
12:18
about the the one board the single service delivery more concept yeah so Utah is a single
Speaker 40
12:26
area state we were grandfathered into that meaning we got lucky we were doing that prior
Speaker 41
12:30
to switches in law and we got lucky to beat grandfathered into that so we only have one board here we don't have local boards we have one boardzcau can I just ask you maybe kind of go back
Senator Jane English
Unverified
12:42
just a little bit because not everybody in the room knows that you're talking about workforce investment boards so if you just kind of just go back to that how you ended up as
a single entity but what sort of what that structure is
Speaker 40
13:01
yeah sos this workforce boards underorkforce innovation and Opportunity Act you are asked to have or required to have workforce development boards you have to have a state workforce development board and then if you have local areas you have to have local area workforce boards and so states get an opportunity to to say what those local areas look like but they do have to have local
areas in there has to be some sort of logic behind that Utah doesn't have local areas that's a little bit different than most states. Most states there are a few states across the nation that got lucky. they got grandfathered into an old law that allowed you to have just a single area for your whole state instead of different local areas and so what what a workforce board is is that it's compiled of employer and community partners and they come
together and then they help they help direct the services that your entity provides may help look at your policies they help look at the needs of the workforce in that area and then sort of helpra how those go in in and they they direct funding they have at least we owea funding workforce innovation andpportunity Act funding for for adult dislocated worker and youth funding they're able to
direct those funds among among many other responsibilities and so in Utah we don't have local area boards we have one board across the state the department of Workforce Services does not contract out to local entities or counties all of that all of those services are run through the Department of Workforce Services so our staff are located in those offices that Greg mentioned across the state they're all governed by one
state workforce development boardard under the Department of Workforce Services. So we have a we basically we we go through the procurement process of doing a single of doing a a sole source we follow our state procurement rules and we do a sole source with the department of Workforce Services our state workforce board works with our purchasing department for the state they do a sole source to provide to allow the department of Workforce Services to provide
these services across the state part of the reason that we are able to
Speaker 44
15:36
do a sole source is because we do cover a large geographic area with a very
Speaker 40
15:42
few offices relatives have agreed to that to that large geographic area and then we also have all of the services under one umbrella likegreg mentioned. So if you come into an office and you're seeking connection to the services that we offer under that on on that piece of paper you have you're able to get connected to
those services through those offices under that sole source that we have to provide the services so it is a little bit different. we have one board wi which we have about 20 employers on from across the state and those employers were we we do a lot of it is a large board because they do take on all the responsibilities of local boards and so the we do a lot of that work in committees in committees because it's just too big of a board to do all the work
Speaker 44
16:33
together so we do the work in committees and report out to the full board.
Speaker 40
16:38
so when we when we say single area state that just means that that we don't have again we don't have any contracts we don't contract it out to to local areas everything is sort of governed at a at from the top down so and then and when I say that what I mean is that that our admin services they're all connected so I do have assistant directors that are in different areas across the state that are based on
industry clusters and commuter patterns and those service area directors and I meet regularly to to talk about where it makes sense to streamline services and where it makes sense to do things a little differently Typically when you walk into our offices you're gonna get a a similar look and feel but there will be slight differences for example we have a couple of one person offices that's the the feel there is gonna be a little bit different because of the traffic patterns that are coming in and you've got one
person that's that's delivering all those services or connecting to all those services. So they it's it's in general it's streamlined and and and similar but in some of the rural areas there might be a little bit of a different feel even though all the services are the same that the way that we're going to provide them will be very similar I learned questions sorry I should ask if those questions because the single area state might be a little different
Speaker 54
18:12
if there are no follow up questions we will spin off so let
Senator Jane English
Unverified
18:17
me ask this question so then when you are I think you're getting a hit on the medicaid eligibility and food stamps and and so on and so forth but so I think under Wioa right now they have all those partners that you have to have that people do MOUs with and so you you
don't have that they're just under one umbrella
Speaker 56
18:46
we do have an MOU but they're but some of the partners for example
Speaker 41
18:51
we we have most of the partners there are partners we don't have under our umbrella. one of those would be like jobborp. Joborps require a required or it's not a required partner it's one of the partners that you have to have
Speaker 40
19:05
an MOU with and so they're part of our so we do have an MOU but we're it's it's it's not probably not as an it's got everyone under it but we have the majority we have the
lion's share so maybe not as many signatures as would be on other MOUs how about
Senator Jane English
Unverified
19:23
that? OK so that that mean and sometimes in some of this cases from a financial standpoint it it becomes more difficult for local areas which you don't have because you had that single state yeah
Speaker 41
19:38
so we just do that MOu at the top and then there are there are we do have some partners in there like the the only an American affairs
adult education even though voreha his underarm umbrella the department
Speaker 40
19:54
of laborbor makes us have them sign it as well in addition to all the other partners but they they belong to us still too so this may get ahead
Senator Jane English
Unverified
20:06
of you but then how do you coordinate your employment activities with adult education how how how do you align them or do you I froze for a second there's something of
Speaker 41
20:18
sorry reinstate your question again about a adulted.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
20:24
beg pardon yeah I was thinking about adult education as a person how do you align them then with your employment building a helping people build their their resume are they included
as one as your partner every day yeah so so we they are
Speaker 40
20:46
in two of our buildings now but for the most part they just do they do referrals we have offices
where they'll come in one or two days a week but a lot of adult ed is referrals.dult ed is underation and education does not report to the executive branch in the state of Utah. I forgot that that's right yeah strange yes ok so go
Senator Jane English
Unverified
21:12
ahead so so senator you you brought up two topics we we can go left
Speaker 52
21:18
or right you pick because we'll we'll address them both but would you like us
Speaker 31
21:27
the flow that a customer experiences or do you want us to talk briefly about some of the kind of the funding or
Senator Jane English
Unverified
21:34
funding you let's talk about the customer experience and thing about so if we can we kind of relate it to what happens to folks when they come in and they're going to be employed but we're going they may need food stamps
or they may need but that's not a long term solution it's a short term solution so thank you
Speaker 27
21:53
that that we are that's exactly what we're about the
Speaker 31
22:00
I used the phrase upfront if you put the the the customer or the client the participant whatever verbiage
Speaker 30
22:07
your state uses to address those that you serve in in the center and then you subordinate everything you do around it your operations, your policy decisions, your technology investments it it kind of takes a while to train your brain because sometimes people will say well I can't do that or
Speaker 31
22:22
policy says this we we we've had we've fought those fights within ourselves throughout the years but ultimately the goal is to remove barriers
to to help people change the trajectory of their life. Not everyone's going to be successful. Not everyone is a magnanimous step in one direction or another it's just sometimes
Speaker 30
22:42
it's just a little bit to the left or right. Other times it is a complete 180 improvement and so when to use the the build upon kind of the description that you started with if somebody were and we're we're going to start with mediated servers brick and mortar services we can pivot back to some of the online opportunities if you'd like but if if I apply
if I walk into a brick and mortar structure, the first thing that will happen is you're greeted by almost like a triage concept. Somebody will ask you what brings you in today we will we'll screen for like for example we'll screen for veteran services so we make sure that we can get that down those individuals down at a slightly different pathway we have specialized grant funding with veterans and specialized resources available to assist veterans. Somebody mentions I'm hungry. I need how I need assistance with food. I need
career and education assistants I know this isn't gonna make sense. Our model just kind of takes over we can we can get you to a computer to apply for benefits if you are feeling tech savvy and have access to these resources even on your you know even on your your handheld device. a lot of the the application opportunities you can apply for benefits online not every benefit requires a participation between the applicant and an employment counselor but where the
let me hit pause there our eligibility services are not geographicbas it's a call center model so wherever you live in the state you are not being assisted for your food stamps or your medical by someone in the geographic vicinity. but our case management services at this time we have not centralized and and deployed a a virtual or or mass deployed telleer for virtual opportunity for case management services so if I come into the building and I apply online for for snap
the technology takes over your snap application gets processed but if there are work requirements or if I apply for financial assistance and there are participation requirements you will be you will be connected to a career coach and we call them employment counselors or career coaches right there in your office so that one on one mediation can begin that relationship development can begin. all of your activity to make to complete and then maintain eligibility for those supportive benefits is done online
or via telephone or in some cases you're just taking pictures and sending text messages or emails to get the verifications submitted to keep your case going so back to my original story somebody walks in they apply or they they say they need assistance with a particular benefit when I say our model takes over it depends on what they're looking for if it's solely down the employment path we'll take him down the career and education resources if it's a solely at least initially down a temporary resource path we have an opportunity for that to take place if it's a
combination we'll make sure we prioritize that's where we where I was going with the triage concept. letz how do you want to add on to that
Speaker 40
25:50
think it's just I would mention that it's not uncommon for there to be employers hiring in the lobbies so as people are coming in they're seeing employers they're getting connected to employment or at least seeing hey, I'm going into an employment center that's not just temporary assistance and then I think our staff are are good it's not also not uncommon
for like a snap ENT person to be referred to workforce innovation and Opportunity Act. it's not uncommon for for the counselor to say yes you might be here today for snap benefits and we have all these other things. We understand you're looking for food we're going to help you get food, we're gonna help you get you know, get your immediate need met and don't forget about us we have all these other things we can offer you and so it's it's I think one of the things that that we like about our centers and that we pride ourselves on is that we're
really are combining that that concept of work and employment even even the language we use they they are employment centers when you come to apply for benefits you're coming to an employment center.
Speaker 30
26:58
it kind of building on that technology we are and and senator I apologize you've heard a lot of this come out of my mouth. we're very blessed here we have a we have a we've had a very long healthy period of strong economic conditions diversified economy balanced budgets like we we
very low unemployment rate, high labor force participation so that creates a unique set of challenges with respect to serving employers and assisting job seekers and connecting with the right employer we have invested in technology from day one. like right now unemployment insurance our unemployment insurance division has regularly won the what what is affectly called the triple crown around the nation for for medium sized states now and in large part it's
attributed to technology we we make sure we have the opportunity to serve people through a mediated manner because many of our federal programs require the opportunity if I want to meet with someone if I want to use paper pencil but quite frankly that's very much the the anomaly here the vast majority of our services initiate online or maintained online our staff assist people in our employment centers to apply for and maintain and search for work online the state
of Utah has invested heavily not work f or ce services but the state of Utah as a whole has invested a tech heavily to ensure that we have technology embedded in our K12 education that hardware is available that broadband is available even in our rural portions of the state so building upon that workforce services senses it since it's inception has had its technology be of high primacy. We have4 main computer programs three of them built inhouse, one of them we inherited the vocational
rehabilitation program which our state uses a vendor program that I believe it's37 states and territories also used so where are we building from the ground up we would not have a three inhouse and one vendor program and the reason for that is all our all our systems are linked if you're talking to an eligibility worker and you report an address change and they make a change in their computer system. it can talk to our unemployment insurance divisions at computer system and then our
our case management system which also houses our job board for example and it also talks we build interfaces so it can speak to our vocational rehabilitation program that's a customer benefit that's an elimination of a barrier reduces errors it also is a customer friendly benefit where they don't have to tell the same story to three or four different people but an added benefit to that is the ability for us to be more accurate and more timely in all of the federal reporting you manage a lot of federal programs and you know, I don't want to
whnliz up here but the hundreds and hundreds of elements that are needed at participant levels for some of our programs is just it's very overwhelming so to make sure that we have optimal computer systems to even help with our federal reporting it's fantastic. That comes with a cost that obviously we we have more so over the years evolved into we're not a big bang agency we don't build a system, let it die as we're building the nextus so we've built up systems and
now we just maintain them so it's it's continual investment so our systems don't hit end of life they don't hit dying decaying they're just they're they're maintained they're reinvested in every year our eligibility our unemployment insurance and our case management system uhu if if the if the platform in which it's built is becoming on end of life we're far enough ahead of that that we're rebuilding our our our system fun open sourcece technology where we can and working with vendors to mitigate licensure
costs where we can but technology is a very very big component of what we do. it has
Speaker 81
30:57
been since our inception lili anything else you want to add about technology? I think
Speaker 56
31:03
wherever we can we try to build a federal requirements into the computer system so
Speaker 40
31:07
that our staff don't have to we we try to make it easy for them to get it right. we don't want our staff to have to figure out all the differences between programs we want them to focus on the customer and so our staff in general
don't we don't we talk about current education. we don't talk about what's funding that like we do talk about what's spending that when we have to but in general we don't talk about oh this is a ta of customer or this is a we owe a customer or this is snap customer this is a customer we're helping them with education services we're helping them find a job we're helping them with supported services to be successful at that job. That's that's where we want the focus to be and so we try to build our computer systems to to deal with all the the as much of the policy and the the
the federal requirements as possible. like your example of the Wagnerpaiser
Speaker 31
31:59
you want to use that one our staff don't enroll in system does I'm sorry do Wagnereiser is that
Speaker 40
32:09
where you're at so we so a lot of states enroll customers in Wagneraiser we don't do that. The system knows based on the services that we're providing if a if a person is a Wagnereiser customer. and so that's an example of where we have
just built it in behind the scenes to take the guesswork away from our staff and because of
Speaker 31
32:31
data privacy again you know it's like a
Speaker 30
32:34
very good thing you have to build in a protection data privacy requires least privileged access for all of your staff so we make sure that our staff never have to leave their native system if if you're an eligibility worker you work at the eligibility system and if there are things you need to know that are going on in other systems we've built interfaces so you will never log out of your system to log into
to another one it will feed the relevant or applicable or helpful fields and so that ' s how we court that's that's another mechanism for us to coordinate internally amongst ourselves statewide I know we're we're starting to get low on time. I just want to add a couple of things here on on money as I saidliz and I make similar presentations like this with many individuals across the nation and I would would be remiss if I didn't say the statement because I believe it to be true. Workforce services stands today because we have the best financial shop in the business. It is the most
complicated budget in the state of Utah and that quite frankly is because of our own doing because of the programs underneath our umbrella you know $2 billion budget is not like the most astronomical in terms of dollars but the complexity involved in the depending on how you want to analyze it50 to100 different funding streams that all have federal requirements or state requirements in terms of fiscal reporting every payor wants to be the payor of last resort so you can imagine the complication when we say we have an integrated model we don't want our staff to think about money
we pour money in a blender, we hit puree, they do their business but on the back end unfortunately our our financial staff have to deconstruct the pureRA and turn it back into every penny at a time so having a topnotch financial team is it's not a luxury it's a necessity. I don't know that I don't know how we would survive were we not to have that that's just not a place to it's just not a place you can afford to to scrimp and save back to our formation of our department and each of these divisions that you
had on your page you know I told you they came at different times right we talked about them coming at different times back in 2009 our first foray into forming a statewide division even under the common umbrella of workforce services after we had been alive for what 1516 years we decided to form a singular statewide division 11 leadership structure this is a little painful but I, we we believe in it and we we will continue to do it anytime it's relevant. We
we had what we call a phased recruitment. We knew what the model we actually had the foresight of being alive for 15 years as a department so we knew what this new division needed to look like how to access services deploy services and serve a support one another the coworkers but also serve the citizens of the state of Utah and as a result we went through again phased recruitment and that means we recruited for one lead leadership level at a time anybody could apply from anywhere in our department. it
wasn't just we tapped the existing people in the existing roles. Everybody had to reapply for positions that they wanted and when the dust settled top to bottom that eligibility division remains our largest division in the department right now it's aroximately 40 ish percent of our department they were a little bit bigger then technologies allowed them to streamline and downsize but then when they when we went through this phased recruitment people holding positions of leadership in some cases did not retain
the job they were in the level they were in or a leadership position at all and that it that just goes to the notion that whatever model you're building your leadership can make it be successful or they can crush it and I'm not talking about whoever's name is on the top of the letterhead I'm talking about everybody from your supervisor to your office managers to regional managers you know whatever verbiage you're using to to signify leadership. Everyone's got to be on board and you have an opportunity if you're forming something from the ground up if
you don't have the right leaders as much as I also mentioned our finance team having the proper leadership personnel is is paramount to success uhliz and I just had a quick test of test we we we presented to our legislative committee or one of our legislative committees last week and we were talking about challenges and one of the things we left it with was the notion that you know we're viewed as the the employment arm for the state of Utah or one of the
employment arms I guess you would say within state government we are the employment arm but sometimes there's a a failure to recognize we too are an employer we have 2000 employers employees excuse me approximately 2/3 a little under 2/3 of those employees live in what we call an urban corridor it 23 of our staff live in a 120 mile radius but the other third of the staff take up the rest of the land mass of our state in what we would call rural Utah. Why am I telling you
that? because well as an employer recruitment and retention challenges exist. Our model has nothing to do with recruitment and retention. Our staff don't come or go because we are a one door model so we have to have the right culture, the right leaders we have to
Speaker 28
37:48
have compensation that is competitive with the local communities we have to have the the I don't know the employee the
Speaker 30
37:56
employee offerings that attract individuals with a three you know low low to mid3% unemployment rate that we've
sustained for for many years now if we've we've been very fortunate in that but that also creates challenges with recruitment and retention so as an employer ourselves we do run into some challenges that in in geographic pockets. So we believe in this model because if there are large challenges such as a COVId event or there's large turnover activities in one geographic area. we have the ability through this blended model to pick up staff and temporarily
shift them to other geographies other programs while we're trying to figure out how to absorb or redistribute resources and or recruit resources so the the organized model has while the challenges exist externally to us we believe our model does help us administratively. it does help us with responsivity.
Speaker 28
38:51
any final thoughts you'd like to add please? think you got it you have any questions for us think we have a question
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:07
here uhpresentative Crawford thank you madam chair
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
39:11
thank you for sharing Utah's experience a couple of questions and I'm
going to go back because I've had questions for a little bit so so you only have one workforce board that would be considered your state workforce sport is that correct? all right and then when you
began to talk about how you operate and you said brick and mortar I was trying to follow that as far as the triage experience you screen for a vet and then you send them to the places they need to go . the other is that you said we will send you to a computer if I heard that right, I guess within your office but then you also said that we'll send you to a ca careered track.
so you have computers you send people to to fill out for let me guess the hungry the housing all of that and then if they want you send them to a computer and then if they want help for career, then you would send them to a different area in the same building is that correct? it could be in this I mean it could be sending
Speaker 56
40:35
them to someone else it could just be the
Speaker 40
40:40
same staff person in some of our smaller offices it's just the same person the same person's helping them with with all of those things. in some of our larger offices where we can where we have a larger volume of customers we might it might be let me walk you over to my coworker, you know, Jan over here and and let her tell you more about this career and education service and
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
41:07
then all of your computer systems talk to each other when
you make one change like you'd said in an address then it goes to every service provider I'm gonna call him OK I wish Arkansas did that. So and you also said that you guys maintained and reinvested in the system that you have computer system how much is that do you know
what a line item to continue to keep at the top because you said you're also doing the federal requirements so that your staff don't have to deal with that with paper it's just in front of them when they open up the program is
Speaker 31
42:01
that correct our our technology investment I don't know that I line item of
Speaker 98
42:06
it in terms of a technology investment our our state's technology staff are housed in a standalone technology department
Speaker 30
42:14
and then they are outstationed to affiliated with each of the executive branch agencies so we have a a in in our main administrative office in downtown Salt Lake City we have a department of Technology staff who manage a workforce services issued budget and within that budget and'mm speaking kind of highle here we we allocate money very very meticulously because
of you know every payer wants to be the last resort but in general we we allocate money through three kind of lenses federal
Speaker 28
42:53
or legislative mandates is a is a bucket keeping the systems alive and open
Speaker 30
43:00
and and active as a bucket and then we have a third bucket which is kind of our self-imposed self desired enhancements and unfortunately those first two buckets tend to absorb our money even though we
have designs on doing things bells and whistles or enhancements it's a little bit of a challenge to get to those because those first two buckets take up a lot
Speaker 28
43:24
of personnel experiences so we we have a budget that they start with every year now
Speaker 30
43:33
throughout the year if grants are available say out of one of our federal programs offers an opportunity like right now the big thing is the artificial intelligence. I can tell you that we're not we're we're still
tiptoeing around artificial intelligence how or if or if and how it's not because we don't want to it's that we just our
Speaker 28
43:55
state as a whole has not helped guide exactly where and how they want each of our agencies to invest. we believe that there's some opportunities with call centers to perhaps use some A I type of chatbox for standardized questions but we're not quite there
Speaker 30
44:09
yet but were we to go there that might be today in in an enhancement bucket but when we decide that is something
that we're going to commit to it gets prioritized differently
Speaker 28
44:22
and if there's we don't have enough funding internally or grants aren't available that could be something that we would prioritize discuss with our our governor's office and perhaps elevate it to be a a request through our governor's office and our legislature. OK, one more please OK I
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
44:38
had a constituent who had sent me this so I'm gonna read it and hope
I get it right. right in Arkansas we have 10
regional workforce boards you guys have one how does that impact access to regional services or brick and mortar access for participants who need services . I'm going to continue to read that is the administrative cost savings of the one board model worth the tradeoff from having dedicated regional boards what are some of the challenges that would come with the
transition from the 10 regional boards to one. you need me to split it up I
Speaker 40
45:31
I could take a stop but I think we we believe that our model allows us to serve customers better because we're we've got a lot of services that they're under one roof and so and and like greg was mentioning when we need to move resources we're able to pivot and move resources. an example of that is
recently we had a service area who was not able they were they they were losing losing staff they were lost such front they were unable to be able to keep up with the workload of processing workforce innovation andun Act applications and we met together in one of our rural areas said hey I've got a staff person who can help out and they started processing those applications to help with the workload that was happening in the urban area. in that instance we believe that that our our customer service was actually better because instead of being
behind we actually were able to keep up with the workload by shifting it because we could do that very quickly and very easily. Another example is is that when we need to shift money from one service area or one area of our state to another we just were able to just shift it. we don't have to go through a local board we can just work with our our state board and we just shift the money it's it's that simple and it and it happens in less than 24 hours.
so I I think for for us we have we feel like that that having all of these things under one umbrella and having having a single area state having a single board actually allows us to pivot quicker and to be able to adjust to the needs of of customers. I will also tell you that our our our offices that are across the state they still are responsible to know the resources in their area just because we have a single board doesn't take away the responsibilities to know that in landing there's a driveby food
bank and it happens once a month where in Saltlake we know there's several food banks and where they are and where we can refer people to. So doesn't take away those those responsibilities to know that and to be engaged in the community and to be working with community partners all it does is allows us to sort of streamline our services and I don't knowgreg if you want to take a sab at kind of like sort of I don't know that we ever had to really shift to away from local boards but I don't know
Speaker 41
47:51
if you want to take a stab at at that one thing it says the
Speaker 31
48:01
one of the things that Liz and I always leave you with so we're we're gonna maybe leave
Speaker 30
48:07
it we're gonna say it now and then just pretend we said it at the end as our parting statement we don't we don't ever encourage anybody to try to replicate Utah. We encourage you to get the flexibility to create your own model. Our model works for us because our our population has grown over the years when we started we were a pretty firmly entrenched as a small state and now we're no longer considered small so population growth and migration
we are we're we're very medium now so our needs have changed our geography has changed our infrastructure has changed just so I want to be clear I'm not suggesting anybody should be Utah. they should be pursuing and fighting to get that waiver so you can create a one board or eye board or two board or whatever works for you. The pure mathematics of of the of the constituent's question this is I guess what I would say if I had 10 boards and each board had this is such
a made up example I'll probably butcher it if each board had one lawyer, one communications specialist and one senior financial accountant and you decided to have a single board managing all that I don't know that you need you can have one person do it for the entirety of the state but the logic would be instead of having 10 lawyers,10 communications specialists and what did I say 10 accountants you could manage the same workload with
a make about50% of it60,70% of those staff the remaining resources could be turned back over or reinvested in yourself into whether it be technology whether it be personnel additional brick and mortar structures light opportunities for for greater self-directed or online services so the lowering of the administrative expenses unless you're planning to return funding to either your state legislature or the federal government or you're already
let's say you're you're blowing past the money that's available to you and you have to get down and live within a budget having fewer admin expenses and you know I'm I'm known to say the two things that cost money in my life right now are bricks and bodies and I've got to reduce one of those those are the two things we play with and so we we don't have a large geographic brick footprint across our state we are embedded in s we have 2 n 9 counties we do have a brick and mortar structure in 26 of our 29 counties but we have heavily invested in
self-directed opportunities so that we can allow those who don't need brick and mortar to do for themselves quite frankly that is part of the reason why we are still available to do what we do today because we can't absorb continued increases in admin costs. Our rent has gone up, funding has stayed flat. Our cost of gasoline vehicles post it notes you can't tell I'm sitting in the dark so is Liz we're doing our part to keep the electricity costs down you know whatever whatever we can do to
help with overhead expenditure so in my mind just the the logic of a consolidated
Speaker 28
51:13
model and that's kind of one of the first steps you know when I when I talked about political will the you're you with your model when you're done
Speaker 30
51:23
if you still have 10 people you've just kind of rearranged and reorganized they haven't necessarily and that's perhaps your first phase. I don't know that you're coming out of the gate going from 10 to2 but if you're coming out of the gate 10 but your structure looks different and then you should
have a plan or I encourage you to have excuse me nothing intended to be directed. I encourage you to have a plan of how you absorb vacancies, how your attrition works because the goal was to end up in a consolidated model such as ours with less administration is needed to run a statewide model while still granting this is my word for it the sovereignty of the local areas to live within the structure of statewide leadership and some sovereignty of local localized nuances and that
really is a science and an art that it's hard to communicate it's kind of a you know it when you see it and feel it. hope that helps just a little It does thank you very
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
52:30
much thank you let's seepresentative Bentley thank you chairman thank you all so much for being here today we have lots of questions but the one thing I want to ask is how are you staying connected with your employers out there so I know it's really important for us to make sure that you know we are actually training people for the jobs that are open so what
do you guys do to stay connected to the employers in your
Speaker 41
52:49
state? we do have business service reps like most states we call them
Speaker 40
52:54
workforce development specialists here we have them throughout the state. we also have our our managers over our centers are connected to the community and to employers Sa with our service area directors and so that's that's a that's a really big thing that we expect and and you know, especially our leadership is in connection not
Speaker 111
53:14
only with employers but also local elected officials and community partners So great thank you so much for
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
53:22
that umm trying to think of the other quick question that I had So how did I guess what
I want is how was the population of Utah 345 million
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
53:40
have 2929 counties and 29brick and mortars so when those people go oh that's what
so when in your brick and mortars does that cover medical as well as
employment employment opportunities in our state another department owns the policy they're the
Speaker 30
53:55
quote unquote supreme agency with Centers for medicaid CmS Centers for Medicaid Services but they've contracted with us to do the eligibility determination because years ago I didn't list that on the sheet that you have in front of you but we used to have a separate eligibility for medicaid and then everything else and and the the citizens
are bouncing back and forth because you're adding medical and and dropping food stamps from month to month and it was just a kind of funky model wasn't the best service so we were able to take over the entirety of the eligibility determination process for medical childcare, what we call financial which could be like a tan primarily a tanner funded or tanna funding sourcesnap we have unemployment insurance. one of the things that would build uponliz and I just actually answered this question last week in a in a legislative presentation when you said how are we connected to
employersthing Liz said and then again one of my little add-ons that I think is unique for our department we have the bureau
Speaker 79
54:55
of Labor Statisticsroup are what we call our workforce research and analysis division it's on the back of lower right on the backside
Speaker 30
55:03
of your your sheet there so that division the funding that comes from DOl that division also has economists and they produce a great deal of fantastic labor market information so we are always relying on data trying to blend scientific data DOL data lags a bit but we're blending
scientific data with on the ground information in our local communities so that we can we can train people in occupations that are in demand or provide training resource opportunities for those in their local areas for occupations that are in demand at a from a local perspective because we know that Saltlake we know northern Utah, southern Utah and central Utah absolutely have different economic needs they have different industry bases your
tourism hospitality in one area, oil and gas at another and manufacturing in another so they're looking and needing they're looking for different job seeker skills and credentials and the training institutions the educational institutions who asliz said are not part of the executive branch they too have to remain connected to the employer so we piggyback a lot with it's it's a threelegged bar stool if you will it's education employer industry led and then our our contribution
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
56:21
that's great. So on your so the employees in your 29 counties so those people there they're cross trained to be able to cover all of these areas correct? Everything you've got listed here with from childcare to snap to financial medical training and all of that, correct? yeah they know high level all
Speaker 116
56:42
of that and then the details especially for
Speaker 40
56:45
those eligibility programs are are governed through a phone system a statewide phone system or online chat.
so if if someone started getting into detailed questions about Medicaid they'd have to contact someone on the phone or on chat but the high level our staff can sit down and help them fill out an application that can answer high level questions help them image documents that are needed to determine eligibility kind of how we have it is we have a front facing you know people coming in our office they have to know our our staff have to know enough to know how high level how to help. so they know
they're they're sort of a jack of all trades some of our our what we call them connection staff when you come into a center they greet you. they're a jack of all trades. they know a little bit about everything and so but but if you want to get into details then they'll they'll connect you to a person that that's gonna be able to get in the weeds Great thank you I will tell you in one of
Speaker 81
57:45
our iterations you know we talked about things that didn't always go
Speaker 30
57:48
right verse five or so years we had the notion of a super worker you
would train one human being to know and do everything and you can imagine that did quite last very long cause it's really hard for human beings to absorb the complexity of what we do and I mean it sounds great on paper and if if we could simplify federal programs or you know let it be just a singular pill that you take we would be we will have solved the complexity of all things workforce development but unfortunately specialization makes sense where you can go faster, achieve efficiencies you can provide
better service asliz said our front end folks triage a great deal they can refer to the specialized folks eligibility services division they accept applications determine elig ibility for Medicaid our brick and mortar staff who triage people will have nothing to do with the actual eligibility determination and recertification one more quick thing other than verifications and and helping those get submitted and then also talking to that person
who's bringing in the verifications about employment opportunities because we are a workforce entity Great so can someone
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
59:02
and you get all this online without even going to a brick and mortar can they access everything at home on a computer online. or eligibility
Speaker 31
59:12
you never have to leave if you can get your verifications together or we can find them ourselves
Speaker 30
59:19
doing it on your behalf your electronic interfaces. However, if the program that you're applying for requires interaction
Speaker 31
59:27
with a what we call an employment counselor or a career coach that
Speaker 28
59:32
requires that interaction you will have to go in to department to help facilitate that that relationship development OK thank you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
59:40
so are you all a medicaid expansion state or not did you did you
do the medicaid expansion where you have the more than just the the basic medicaid
Speaker 79
59:58
we do have some we we do have some medicaid programs yes and I think as you and I talked we had work requirements set
Speaker 30
1:00:14
presidential status and then we no longer needed those but we are ready for three institutions how are
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:00:20
you how how are you handling those those work requirements for snap and for medicaid and I'm not sure thatanno still
has them I don't know I don't remember we
Speaker 95
1:00:33
we do have work requirements for tata and staff. Medicaid hasn't hasn't fully released
Speaker 40
1:00:38
theirs yet we did do Medicaid work requirements for a couple like a month or two prior to COVID so we had implemented work requirements just in January COVvid hit in March. We didn't do it long enough to know that it was successful or not because it was just it was so
quick but we do our snap work requirements we actually do those more similar to virtual. We actually do our snap interviews mostly virtual unless someone wants to be in person. So we have a a few people statewide they make they call out to individuals li zz ie froze yeah I was wondering
so so we do that virtually for snap work requirements we have a few people statewide in fact we only have three workers that do it statewide. They call out, they do virtual appointments like this with individuals across the state help them with job search umannna does we do that in the office because there's a little bit more of a workload there. so we have workers in the offices that will sit down do do they required assessment do the employ ment the employment plans and so and medicaid has yet to
be determined because I think there's some complexities of what they added into the rules that weren't there when we did it before. so I just I just
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:02:13
keep wondering how we're going to get people to what I keep saying is this a
kind of on again off again if you do or you don't and you're on for a month and you don't I thought if if we're trying to figure out how we put people long term into some employment
opportunities and this is their their support system versus the other way around it almost sounds even even with the work requirements almost like that's the first thing and and it's not a long term plan. does that make sense? think for us there so it depends
Speaker 40
1:02:48
on the program foranana if it's it's a little it can be a little bit more I don't wanna say long term because it's not because it still has time limits and but it's it's a it's a little bit longer of a runway to help you get employment. I
think that's why it's important and one of the things that we that we know is education matters some kind of skill attainment matters and when I say education I'm not necessarily talking about like college track I'm talking about short term education. and so a lot of these individuals where it makes sense were referring them to the workforce innovation and Opportunity Act and and coupling those services together that's why it's so important that we that we do some
Speaker 44
1:03:27
of those services together because that that matters anybody else have some more
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:03:35
let's see oh uhpresentative Crawford thank you my constituent again
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:03:39
how does Utah determine what amount of funding funding goes
where and for what without a regional board submitting a plan. who makes those decisions can you tell us which funding are talking about weoa
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:04:01
owea so for Cindy from our a state
level what happens is that money goes by formula to each of the our workforce boards and the state re keeps about 15% as administrative thing and the governor's but that money goes by formula to those
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:04:21
so that would continue if we did something like Utah. No, it wouldn't probably not so how
Speaker 41
1:04:30
we govern it in Utah is we we do we do allocate it to
Speaker 40
1:04:38
certain areas of the state and but we just don't have to have the there's no plan it cuts out a lot of the work you don't have to have a local board submit a plan it really is as simple as one of my area directors picks up the phone and calls my program specialist and says hey it looks like we're getting really tight on our funding we've got a we got a bunch of OJTs coming up for our youth is there is there extra money and and and we go and we look and say oh this area of the state doesn't need as much and we shift money
or we're and we're always talking about it we're always looking at the budget, where is it? where are we at? what are the needs but but it really it it it's not complicated at all. there's no plan it's it's a phone call or an email we don't have to dispense the entirety of our allocation
Speaker 31
1:05:25
if we don't want to we could give everybody a million dollars and
Speaker 30
1:05:29
sit on the rest and then deploy as needed and that and I guess the reason why we're we would struggle to relate to what you're you're you would go through or are about to go
through should you adopt something like this we're sitting on 28+ years now of historical records so we kind of know upfront we have we have some degree of historical knowledge that we can lean on to allocate money with some degree of confidence that we're we're going to be somewhat close for the three titles but don't dislocated worker
Speaker 28
1:06:00
youth and then asliz said that the the complexity is eradicated when it comes to having to move money
it I don't even know if it's a phone call we a text message usually gets it done and and when I say she said 24 hours I think she's over she's making kind it's like a text message and then about 15 minutes later the money's moved in our system if everybody's available
Speaker 30
1:06:25
so it it is that simple and I know we're spoiled we don't we don't know what we don't know because this
Speaker 28
1:06:31
is all we know so we're we're we like what what the model allows us to do And I guess it's counter you
know countercyclical with such a strong economy our weoa allocations, I mean they're they're out for public and you you can see them there we're not we talked to our colleagues in Texas and tell us we tell them our allocation and they just kind of chuckle and you know pat us on our head and say ok that's
Speaker 133
1:06:57
cute cause we're we're $1012 million excluding agriizeser and you know they that's not what they are it's not what it used to be it
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:07:07
keeps going down all the time makes it harder
Speaker 28
1:07:13
even if it doesn't go down just by staying flat it that's a cut of itself yeah the cost of doing business between bricks and
Speaker 134
1:07:21
bodies is goes up well I don't see any more
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:07:26
questions but this has been very very informative and would probably now have thought of new questions to ask you again so maybe we will invite you to come back but we appreciate you spending the time this last hour with us and giving us an insight because it we we really do have
to look at all kinds of models to see what is going to work for us and what we can do realistically with the federal government how how how can you change think got some pretty strong rules to keep us from doing a lot of things soery do you have some thank you so much for giving us so much time today we really
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:08:02
appreciate and we will be back in touch thank you again both of you appreciate it have a great day
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Overview of Utah Workforce Services Programs [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Recommendations by Committee
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - HOSPITAL, MEDICAID, & DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES STUDY SUBCOMMITTEE, Sep 25, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B- Overview of Utah DWS | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 26
Speaker 28
Speaker 31
Speaker 32
Speaker 30
Speaker 27
Speaker 40
Speaker 41
Speaker 44
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Speaker 70
Speaker 52
Speaker 81
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 98
Speaker 111
Speaker 114
Speaker 79
Speaker 116
Speaker 95
Speaker 130
Speaker 133
Speaker 134