Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Re: Thank you
Dear Friends:
I know this writing is too long. But, for reasons that I think you will
understand as you read further, I hope you will bear with me and kindly afford
me the opportunity to share with you where OKDHS is as an agency and where I am
personally. This morning I am announcing
my retirement as Director of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. It is my intention to leave the day to day
responsibilities of the job on February 29, 2012. That is the currently scheduled day for the
Federal Court’s approval of the pending settlement proposal for our child
welfare litigation. I could have retired
more than a year ago, but I felt that I should stay through the resolution of
the litigation. I have accrued some
vacation time which I hope to use and I have not spoken with our human
resources staff about retirement, so the exact official date of retirement will
be set after visiting with them.
Thank
you
Since coming to the Department on July 1, 1998, I have met
so many wonderful employees, advocates, agency partners and families. So many
of you have been generous with your time, your professional knowledge of the
different situations we face and your quick smiles and kind words. Thank you.
Please accept my sincere thanks for all you have done to fulfill our
mission: to help individuals and families in need help themselves, lead safer,
healthier, more independent and productive lives.
Your efforts have substantially reduced the severity of the
Great Recession in Oklahoma. Please know
that I understand that your efforts in many cases have been at significant
personal expense. Many of you could work
in lots of other jobs and make significantly more money. But, you choose to make a difference with our
most vulnerable neighbors even though your efforts will likely never receive
the recognition they so richly deserve.
As you may know, the average tenure of a state human
services director nationally is about two to four years. Occasionally, some directors stay for seven
to ten years. The main motivation for my
staying for 13 and a half years is the inspiring and creative work I have seen
so many of you do for so many vulnerable families. This letter would be unbearably long if I
even started sharing some of the stories of individuals and families that have
benefited from your work. Whether others
noticed or not, I often have. And I am
sincerely thankful for the initiative that so many of you have shown to
undertake new and creative activities that enrich the lives of the vulnerable
families we serve.
Thank you for working through the last two or three budget
years together. We are not out of the
woods yet. But, I am so glad that our
finance staff and so many others helped find ways to avoid furloughs and a
reduction in force. These reductions
would have been devastating to the public and to our employees. Everyone has worked together creatively to
get through these budget downturns.
Thank you for your patience and sticking with us while we worked through
them.
Your
work is VALUABLE!
I understand that the reason many of you do this work is not
the words you get from me or the money you are paid, but the smiles and
encouragement you receive from the families who benefit from the work. OKDHS is an incredible place to work because
our employees are committed to our mission, to each other and to the families
we serve. We are not perfect. No one is.
Occasionally, we read of a co-worker who has lost their judgment and
embarrassed themselves. Detractors would
like to have others believe that such persons are representative of our entire
workforce. We all know better. I have been in virtually all of our offices
across the state and talked to thousands of employees. I have visited with families in our waiting
rooms and arranged to meet with others in focus groups. Sometimes I do learn of inappropriate
treatment or service and we try to promptly correct it. But, overwhelmingly, I hear the gratefulness
of families who appreciate how their call was promptly returned and how their
questions were answered, even if sometimes it was not the answer they wanted to
hear.
The jobs many of you do are hard. We often see families when they are having
their worst day. I once shared with a
reporter, “it takes an enormous amount of courage for a person to open the
front door of one of our offices and say “I need help.” She looked at me amazed. I thought for a moment she didn’t believe me. Then she told me that years earlier she had
gone through an unexpected divorce that made her a single mom. She then lost her job and could not get her
child’s father to pay the child support he owed. She became desperate. She remembered how much courage it had taken
her to open the door of our office to get help.
She was amazed that I understood how much courage it had taken her. It’s true, dishonest people come to see us
also. They are going through a time in
their life when their addiction is more important than their integrity. They have a different kind of
desperation. We see courage and
desperation daily. So, thank you. You are making an enormous difference in the
quiet lives of many desperate people.
Legal
Issues
As many of you know, before I came to the Department I
practiced law for 17 years. I spent the
last 12 of those 17 years as a member of the Oklahoma State Senate. Being an attorney has helped me do my
job. It has been particularly helpful as
we have navigated through the recent child welfare litigation brought by
Children’s Rights of New York City. They
brought several claims, but the core of their lawsuit was a class action civil
rights case. All of their other claims
were dismissed by the Court and the civil rights claims were narrowed
significantly. We produced an enormous
volume of electronic discovery; a warehouse of “litigation hold” documents;
nationally recognized expert witness reports to show the appropriateness of our
policies and practices; and depositions of dozens of employees and
contractors. Had we not been prepared
and responsive, we would have received significant sanctions. We were prepared to defend the work of our
staff and I believe our vigorous commitment to defend our staff contributed
significantly to the unprecedented settlement of the case that was recently
approved by the parties. It must still
be approved by the Court.
The settlement is the first settlement by these plaintiff
attorneys of a case against a state in at least a decade where a consent decree
was not entered. There were no
admissions of any civil rights infractions and they were expressly denied. There will be no federal court supervision as
normally exists with a consent decree.
Federal court supervision exists in all other states which have settled
with these plaintiff attorneys and the supervision continues in some
jurisdictions for more than a decade in a contentious environment while
attorney fees continue to accrue. Our
agreement establishes a group of three national experts (called “co-neutrals”)
who will review, approve, assess and report their finding on the Department’s
plan to improve 15 identified issues.
These persons will serve as binding arbitrators of any disputes that
develop in the process. Further, unlike
a consent decree which requires an extensive hearing to end court supervision
to show that the State has “substantially complied” with the consent decree,
the need for the three person panel ends in December, 2016 if the Department
makes “good faith efforts” to make continuous, significant progress on the 15
identified issues for twenty four continuous months prior to December,
2016.
Even though we will be obligated to pay plaintiff attorneys
significant attorney fees that we would not have paid had we won at trial, we
would have been obligated to pay even more attorney fees had we lost at trial
on the need to correct even a minor deficiency.
Further, settling now means that the appeal costs are avoided since an
appeal would likely have happened regardless of which side won at trial. It is our expectation that this new approach
will be used by other states as a template for resolving future similar class
action civil rights lawsuits so that funds and emotional energy are focused on
vulnerable children, instead of being used for decades of legal fees and the
distraction of federal court supervision.
Looking
Back - Together
There has been an enormous amount of change in the last 13
and half years. On July 1, 1998, we
didn’t have a website or the info-net or even a browser. We didn’t have email outside the agency. We recently finished rolling out our document
imaging systems throughout the State so that all new benefit eligibility
documentation will be electronically stored when it is received. This means that benefit eligibility work can
be done anywhere we can send the electronic records. It does not mean that sitting down and
talking to families about their needs will be or should be abandoned. Many vulnerable families lack digital access
or lack the ability to navigate a system.
However, as www.okdhslive.org
matures, more and more of our eligibility business can be focused on the needs
of families as we automate the mechanical processes of establishing their
eligibility.
I hesitate to even start sharing highlights because I will
certainly miss many significant changes; but, a few of the highlights over the
years include:
·
The maturation of the Reaching for the Stars
system for child care so that the quality of child care experienced by children
is among the best nationally. The stars
system has contributed to the expansion from less than 20 to more than 200
nationally accredited child care centers or homes. Today, Oklahoma is consistently ranked among
the top two states for the quality of our child care licensing standards and
monitoring practices;
·
Child support collections have more than tripled. We consistently lead the nation in paternity
establishment and last year our child support program was recognized as the
National Child Support Program of the year by the National Association of Child
Support Enforcement Administrators;
·
We developed Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT)
child care to pay child care providers electronically and record real time electronic
attendance for child care. EBT eliminated
millions of dollars of fraud or erroneous payments to child care
providers. It also moved monthly paper
payments to providers to weekly electronic payments to providers. Further, the time to determine eligibility
for working parents who needed child care subsidy was reduced from 30 days to
two days after furnishing us the information we needed to determine their eligibility;
·
A host of new or remodeled buildings were
approved, financed, planned, bid and built updating many of our highest traffic
sites and our oldest, most antiquated facilities. With the help of many private foundation
dollars, we also completed the beautiful Laura Dester Children’s Center in
Tulsa which had been a dream for that community for many years;
·
The Developmental Disabilities Services Division
community services waiting list was worked for several years until the Great
Recession hit. Those efforts expanded
access to community based services by about 40%. Recently, the economic slide has halted the
progress that was made and still needs to be made. But, hundreds of families who wait today for
waiver services get access to family support payments and other services to fill
some of the gap they need;
·
In Aging services, 211 is now a statewide
public-private partnership service that didn’t exist until about five years ago. Adult day care and Older Americans Act vendor
relations have improved greatly. The
ADvantage waiver which permits seniors who are medically and financially eligible
for a nursing home placement to stay home has expanded its participation by
more than 100% so that we now
consistently serve more than 20,000 Oklahomans annually and save taxpayers more
than $300 million dollars annually in nursing home expenditures;
·
While some have been critical of some
performance in child welfare, the prevention efforts our agency and others have
taken have been extremely successful.
While any victims are tragic, the number of victims has significantly
declined. The number of victims varies
from year to year. For 1999, 2000 and
2001, we averaged 14,606 victims per year which was about 14 to 16 victims per
1,000 children. For 2009, 2010 and 2011,
we averaged 7,958 victims or about 8 to 9 victims per 1,000 children. We were above the national
average. We are now below the
national average;
·
Creating Swift Adoptions was a key to many child
welfare successes. One of the reasons I
believe it is a good time for me to leave is because of the milestones that
have been achieved in adopting children.
A couple of weeks ago, we adopted the 16,000th child out of
foster care since I became director. We
have the highest per capita adoption rate of any state over the last decade and
our rate is almost twice the national average.
The cumulative effect of a decade of high adoption rates is one of the
main reasons for the decline in child abuse and neglect. Thousands of children were moved from unsafe
environments to permanent families significantly reducing the risk of being
victimized again;
·
It sounds unbelievable. But, hunger is a problem in Oklahoma. The price of food continues to climb often
because fuel costs in production and distribution are greater than a few years
ago. Our partnerships with the food
banks have helped solve some of these concerns.
But, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food
stamps) has become the primary tool to combat hunger;
·
We should especially thank our field staff for
their work in keeping displaced Oklahomans fed.
There were 40% more Oklahomans receiving SNAP in December 2011 (620,791)
than 36 months ago in December, 2008 (422,140).
There were more than 880,000 different Oklahomans (40% of all children)
on SNAP for at least one month last year.
Our most recent case accuracy rate for Federal Fiscal Year 2011 is
96.56%, the highest rate I can remember.
All states are improving their accuracy.
This rate would have led the nation a few years ago. Today, we are more accurate than the national
average, but not by much;
·
We have won the top regional award for the
administration of the SNAP program for five consecutive years (FFY 2006-2010) –
it couldn’t get too much better than that;
·
We could never have accomplished these
achievements without an incredible support team in our Finance Division; Human
Resources Management Division; Support Services Division and Data Services
Divisions. These staffs have highly
marketable skills in the private sector but keep helping us fulfill our
mission. Those who don’t understand
might call this administration excessive – their combined budgets are less than
5% of our total expenditures -- something any United Way Agency would be very
proud to tout.
As I said, I know I am missing many significant
accomplishments. But, there is not
time. I want to hasten to add that I did
not adopt any children. I did not
complete any SNAP applications. I did not
assess any senior for their eligibility for a nursing home need. I did not establish any paternity for child
support. I did not serve as a foster
parent. I did not make any child care
licensing visits and write any reports.
I did not repair or build the plumbing for any of our properties. I
think you get the picture. I am simply
honored to have worked with you who did these remarkable things.
Looking
Back – Personally
I am extremely grateful for the privilege I have been given
to lead OKDHS. I need to thank all of
the wonderful Commissioners who have served over the last 13 and half
years. You were paid nothing and spent
hundreds of hours of public service each at significant personal and
professional expense. Thank you. I love you and have so enjoyed our time
together.
To the dozens of officers and executives who make this
organization work, I will have extremely fond memories of 90 day reviews,
executive team meetings, Christmas lunches, conference presentations, budget
meetings and the “drop in” visits we have had with each other. I will remember the times we played at the
state games, laughed together, prayed together and the solemnness of attending
a memorial service for a fellow worker or friend. Thank you.
You have made my life rich and I am forever grateful.
I owe a special thanks to Cheryl Willie, my personal
assistant of more than 20 years. Cheryl
was my assistant at the Senate before coming to OKDHS. She retired from OKDHS last year. We have laughed through weddings and ball games
and cried through the pains of parenting and family losses. When either of us cry, the other tastes the
salt. Everyone should have a few
“perfect friends.”
To my family, I simply say thanks. It does not take long to live a
lifetime. I remember a reception to
which I brought my family when I first came to the Department. Hudson was four years old. Today, he’s a senior in high school. My oldest daughter was in high school,
playing highly competitive softball – which she did throughout college. Today, she’s the mother of my three
grandchildren. The middle girls were in
elementary school. Today, they are both
in college – one at OU, where I went to graduate school and one at OSU (my
orange and black sheep). To my wife,
Tracy, thank you for letting me be late to dinner and understanding when I
needed to leave town. I’ll try to get
the yard fixed better this year. I love
you and thank you for being a great mom to our children.
Looking
Forward – The Future of Vulnerable Families and the Services They Need
i.
Creativity
The beauty of change looking forward is that we can shape
it, and we can’t shape it. There are
forces in the future over which none of us have control that can change our
personal and shared future instantly.
Similarly, the beauty of being an immortal and creative creature (unlike
the other mortals God created) is that we can be creative and benefit from the
creativity of others. Think of all the
jobs that exist today as a result of more and more technological advances that
didn’t exist 15 years ago. There are
hundreds of words and companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago: Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.. Similarly, there are thousands of jobs that
existed 15 years ago that don’t exist today and are not coming back. No one
repairs typewriters today. Some of our
younger employees have never seen one.
The future of vulnerable American families is more uncertain
than ever. Even at the end of the Great
Depression, most low income families had both parents at home. Family structures were mostly in-tact and the
combined national debt, business debt and personal debt were nowhere near
today’s crisis levels.
OKDHS is positioned to make a difference for these
vulnerable families. But, the efforts of
positioning OKDHS will be futile unless significant funding is provided to be
able to deliver the services needed.
There is no appetite for tax increases.
We have met the present demand with rising costs and reduced funding due
to a lot of creativity and the enormous dedication of our staff who have not
had an across the board pay increase in more than five years, although our
health care and retirement costs per employee have increased by more than
$4,000 each since 2007. With more than
7,000 employees, you can do the math and tell that it is costing us $28 million
more for these costs – that’s a lot of child welfare workers, funds for persons
on the DDSD waiting list, staff to collect child support, funds to avoid cuts
to child care subsidies, and pay increases for staff. Health care and retirement costs are not with
in the control of OKDHS. To reduce these
costs will require state leadership. So,
the same kind of creative thinking that positioned OKDHS to make a difference
in vulnerable families is needed by state leaders to address costs that are
beyond the control of agencies that deliver services.
ii.
State Policy Choices – Child Care
Last week I sat through a distressing panel on child
care. I had heard it all before. Oklahoma has one of the two best child care
licensing and monitoring programs in the nation. We maximize the federal block grants to take
advantage of all the funding we can get.
Child care is not a “big business.”
These are mom and pop operators who have committed their lives to
improving the lives of children for modest wages. Most child care center operators are older
than 50 years of age. Parents need
someone responsible to care for their children.
They need to work. Oklahoma
(unlike many states) has no waiting list for care. Our reimbursement rates are between 65 and
75% of private pay market rates. We
spend $139 million dollars per year in subsidy payments for child care for
children from birth to age 12 to help low income parents work. It’s the most expensive benefit for which we
pay. It can mean hundreds of dollars per
month per child (unlike food assistance benefit which averages $4.23 per person
per day). So, what’s the problem? Some child care operators are leaving the business
because their costs continue to increase and they can’t afford to continue to
lose money. Then, there’s the cliff
effect for parents. It costs a lot to
raise children today. So when parents
get a pay raise of 25 cents or 50 cents per hour everyone thinks they are
helping the low income family financially.
Instead, the increase may be enough to make them no longer eligible for
child care assistance. As they have to
start paying the full cost of their child care, they can’t afford it and are
often worse off than before they got the raise.
We spend 170 million or more on our state’s four year old program. We are all proud that we have certified
pre-school teachers and that 70% of Oklahoma’s four year olds voluntarily
participate in the state’s free full or part-day preschool program. Spending 170 million for one age cohort (four
year olds) for a wonderful part or full day pre-school program is a great
good. But, is it as important as helping
care for twelve age cohorts for whom we spend less money so their families get
to work? Remember, Oklahoma is among the
best in each of these categories, but the gaps are glaring.
iii.
State Policy Choices – Child support
Similarly, OKDHS runs an outstanding child support
collection process. But, the funding for
this service has been limited while the number of children for whom we are
expected to collect support has grown by about 50% over the last decade (from
around 140,000 children to around 210,000 of the 912,000 children in the
state). We have tripled collections
(from about $100 million per year to more than $300 million per year), but the
amount of uncollected child support is offensive – it totals (about $1.7
billion) more than the unfunded liability (about $1.5 billion) at the Oklahoma
Public Employees Retirement System. Both
debts need to be addressed. But OPERS
has about $6.5 billion dollars in assets to pay the approximately $8 billion
dollars of OPERS debt. There aren’t a
lot of assets to fund the liability owed to children who are being reared by
parents who cannot afford their care.
Uncollected child support is a major challenge nationally. Much of this debt is owed by persons who are
unemployed or under employed or in prison.
There’s a lot of work to find absent parents, legally and genetically
establish paternity, have a due process hearing to establish an order of
support after looking at both parent’s incomes, and then capturing the cash so
that it can be delivered to the custodial parent. How can we expect low income children to have
much of a future if economic fatherlessness is not addressed? Many dads would love to have a good enough
job to pay their support. Many have made
poor choices of friends, lifestyles or partners. But, a child is the present responsibility
for both parents and helping parents become healthy supporters for their
children is a never ending demand.
iv.
State Policy Choices – Two Parent Families
We have no child support cases for children whose parents
are still together. No state is better
positioned than Oklahoma to do something about restoring two parent
families. However, the enormity of the
challenge is remarkable. More than 40%
of all children in American (and in Oklahoma) are now born to moms and dads who
are not married to each other. We know that
children who get the benefit of both of their biological parents have enormously
better high school graduation rates, college completion rates, etc. Poverty rates for children with both parents
(even low income two parent households) are substantially lower than poverty
rates for children being reared in a single parent household. This is not to say that single parents can’t
and don’t make it. Thousands do and do
it well. However, the enormous sacrifice
of custodial parents cannot be understated.
It would have been better in most cases if they could have worked out
their challenges. I won’t expound too
much on Family Expectations as a solution to this challenge except to say that
you can learn more about it at www.familiesok.org. But,
this nationally researched initiative which provides resources to married or
unmarried couples during pregnancy is the best initiative of which I am aware
anywhere to address our need to help children get the benefit of both parents.
As I said earlier, there are circumstances outside of our
control. No one knows the future. We can only do our best day by day. Our ability to address these enormous
concerns will require political courage.
Looking
Forward – Personally
There is never a “perfect time” to leave. There will always be unfinished
business. However, this seems to be the
right time for me. Although I have not
made decisions about my future, I know I want to pursue some other
interests. For me, I want to take some time
to read (I have dozens of books that have piled up on me). I want some time to think about how the
future time I have should be spent. I
won’t take too long to decide. I have
two children in college and one more to go.
But, a couple of firms have already expressed an interest in me working
with them and I want to see if they fit with what I believe I should do. As you can imagine, the demands of the
current job do not afford the kind of reflective thinking that I would like to
pursue. I also have three very young
grandchildren I am looking forward to seeing.
My
Faith
There are many wonderful things
about having a hard job. As I said
earlier, you have a hard job too. One of
the great things about such trials is that your faith is tested. What good is a
belief system or a personal relationship that abandons you when you are in
trouble? What kind of a friend is
that? There sometimes is a lot of public
posturing about one’s faith or even public posturing about one’s lack of faith. If we could use our five senses to validate
what we believe about God, it wouldn’t be faith. We can test the evidence of His existence
with our five senses by looking at the remarkable creation He has made
throughout the universe and in our arms as new children come into our lives. But, most of us haven’t physically seen Him,
heard His audible voice or physically touched Him personally. It takes faith. Having a hard job will either grow your faith
or your despair. Last week, I received
an email from a former employee who moved to another state. She wrote,
“I just
wanted to let you know that even though I’m far away, you are still in my
prayers and thoughts. I know very little
about the current events of OKDHS these days (not being there impedes my
knowledge), but I know that it’s a hard place to be. I trust that you know you were placed there
for a purpose, and that your leadership and compassion and passion for what you
do and what you represent is unmeasureable.
I just thought you should know. I
talk to God about you a lot. And, He
listens.”
She said, “He listens” – that
was the faith part. So, for me, this
journey has been a faith-strengthening walk.
I give Him the credit for all His help in handling the responsibilities
He trusted me to fulfill. My experience
is that He can be trusted to help us when we need Him. We may not understand how He is working. I have read of the slavery and imprisonment
of Joseph and the testing experienced by Job.
In their moments of despair (and I have had such moments also), they may
have temporarily thought dawn would not follow the darkness. But, it did for them and it has for me.
Walk
On!
I am finishing this chapter of my life and will soon start a
new one. Some have only recently come to
the Department and you are in the beginning of your career and the beginning of
a chapter that I hope you enjoy greatly.
Others are “Be teamers.” You Be
here when I came and you Be here as I leave.
Regardless of where you are in your career, please know that I
understand that the work is hard. When
you get cussed out by an angry parent who owes child support for enforcing the
order to pay the support needed by their child; or, for misunderstanding some
piece of information from a young parent at the end of their financial rope;
or, deal with a person with an “entitlement” attitude, please know that the spark
of your kindness can make all the difference in the world to them and to your
co-workers. So, be kind.
In high school, I sang in the chorus. I like to think that I have a great voice –
for group singing. Of all the music we
learned throughout high school, my favorite was a song called “Walk On” written
by Rogers and Hammerstein. We sang it at
commencement almost two score years ago.
It might be corny for some folks.
But, for me, it has a meaning that fits where I am in life. The words go like this:
When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.
Thank you
for walking this journey with me. It has
been an honor to serve with you. I wish
each of you God’s blessings and His best for you and your family.
Warm regards,