- Good morning everybody. - [Audience] Good morning. - You know I'm so honored to be here with you today as we join the Department of Human Services in announcing great news for their front line employees. The Justin Brown's gonna come up here in a second and share with you what's been made possible by our great employees that have been analyzing how best to structure this agency. When Justin took over in June, his team started analyzing the budget. They started looking at how front line employees were organized and I am so excited, he's going to be announcing a fantastic pay raise for our front line employees. It's also going to bolster recruitment for some of the vacant positions that are going to be critical to the mission of this agency. So I wanna thank the legislative leadership. He brought not only my office in, but also the house and the senate to work on this but the legislative leadership has really done a great job in the budget process to give them this opportunity. And I'm confident that we have the right leadership in place at this agency to deliver better outcomes for Oklahoma. So, I wanna praise Justin and his team for what they've done. They've been a fantastic, he's only been on the job since June but I think you're gonna find some exciting news that he's gonna deliver for us. And all this is gonna be made possible without asking for any more dollars from the tax payers. So our 20, 2021 budget plan it'll be, we'll keep it flat. So this is what happens when we get the right leadership in these great agencies. So, they're committed to keeping our 2021 budget flat this year. Even though we're able to give our state employees a much needed pay raise. And also to help bolster the recruiting effort. So, without further ado let me introduce the greatest DHS director in the United States, Mr. Justin Brown. - All right, well thank you for that Governor Stitt. Also wanted to say thank you because the culture that you're building is one of empowerment, and I really feel that we're trying, we're doing our best to drive that level of empowerment through the entire agency. So, empowerment accountability and support has been awesome for me, so thank you for that. Really this is a great day, exciting day. Really one of the goals that the governor laid out early for me specifically was to be a part of becoming a top 10 state. And I started thinking to myself, really how do we do that? How do we as agency become a top 10 agency? And I think the way that we do that in part is to invest in our people. We have incredible work force, the team is just so passionate and committed, and it's just, it's an honor to serve next to them. And so this work force is one that is going to take us to a top 10 agency. One of my favorite things to do as a lot of you know from the social media feed, is to go to the field offices and the county offices and visit with people. Just stand around and talk, in fact we do that all the time. And we just, we ask one simple question a lot of times, usually leads to other questions. But one simple question is, what can we do to support you in becoming a top 10 agency, and your team to be top 10? Even though there are lots of answers to that question because we talk to a lot of people, there are two that really sort of resonate and continue to build over and over. The first one is, we need to add staff. We need team members to help us to serve our customers better, and to really dig deeper into the lives of our customers so that we can make sure to support them and build them up. And then the next one is, we need to in order to candidly to build that team we need to revisit the pay scale and really understand the compensation of each of our employees. So the next step for us was after we hear all of those things from our team, is to go back to the division directors we've had since day one really great relationships with the divisions themselves and the leadership. And we've had meetings and said, you know, what do you need from us, to be top 10 for your division? And those are the same answers. Lots of other answers again, but those are two common answers across the board. So, we also went through an effort and finished an effort to understand where DHS stands with regard to pay scales and compensation with our agency peers. So state agencies within the state of Oklahoma. And it resulted in the understanding that on average we were 13.7% below pay of our agency peers. The same position in other agencies within the state. And so that really, those efforts, all of that together gave us the opportunity to build a pretty clear plan on what needed to happen going forward. So I'm really excited today to sort of share the specifics of that plan. The first step is a pay increase to get 3,700 employees within the state. Up to 100% of their agency at peer level. So that's 3,700 people, 62% of our workforce going up to our agency peer level. So, really a, yeah, thank you. So we worked with a lot of people to do that. Of course we've got House Appropriations Chair Kevin Wallace, he's been really a passionate advocate for human services for his entire career. So we also want to thank you for that. But also with Sterling, Sterling Zearley also with Oklahoma Public Employees Association. They've been very helpful in this as well. So, that is their support and their council really was wonderful in building this, this program. So that's the first step, is 3,700 employees with a 13.7% raise. And then the second step is to open 450 positions to support those teams on the ground serving our customers. So we, we have authorized that 450 positions. So it takes some time to fill those. Each it's important to note that those positions also come with success metrics. So before we are hiring those positions, each of the directors will say, here are the numbers that we are and the goals that we have before we fill those, so that we can know what success looks like ahead of time. That's a very important component to it. And another important component is that these are all customer facing positions. Customer facing or support for customer facing so that we can build a platform that truly serves the people in the state of Oklahoma. So those are the really the big two components. Now, the big question is how we do it and remain budget neutral. So we have approximately, we are eliminating approximately 400 unfilled, vacant positions within the agency that when the directors came to us and said these are the exact specific positions that we need, geographically those were not included. So, we do not need those positions moving forward and so we are eliminating those from our budget so those funds allow us to really take care of the employees that we have and to add those additional employees as well. So, it's an ambitious plan, but one that really is intended to serve our customers in the best way possible. So governor I think that's how we become a top 10 agency. So we're doing our best. That's one way anyways. So, with that, I release the plan. I'm excited to get with our team and to really help to drive it forward and to get their feedback. And looking forward to doing so over the next few months. So, I'm gonna turn it over really quickly to House Appropriations Chair Kevin Wallace to give us a little bit of comments and narratives. So thank you. - Good morning, I am truly excited to be here today. It is a great day. I will tell you that it was touched on just a little bit, but two weeks ago Director Brown and myself and Senator Smalley, another pretty good sized group of leadership administration from DHS, was out in Lincoln County, stopped in for a tour, unannounced. And the exact thing that was mentioned happened. We went and visited with every employee, asked them what we could do to make their job better, improve their capabilities service for our citizens. And we're having great response. You see that leadership not only at the governors level going out to all the agencies meeting the employees, the people who do the state's business every day. And the legislature, you know, we've been working diligently for the last few years trying to figure out how to right size government. You look at DHS, or let's say the Health Human Services, you know, 877.2 million dollars investment of state money annually. This agency gets the line of share of that, and has input and direct contact with over a million citizens every day, or every year. This group of people that have been underpaid from peer to peer on agency pay, I wanna thank you for your service, sticking with us. It is a better day, things are getting better and brighter and we're moving forward. So, I'll tell you the House of Representative is very supportive. I think it is a great plan we got briefed on a couple weeks ago. Reevaluated, looked at maybe some pitfalls what might be coming, how to really implement it timely. And I just have nothing but good things to say about the leadership and I'm proud to be part of this team to come out and say that we're gonna be able to get DHS employees a front line that services our constituents daily. Just peer to peer, agency to agency pay equal, it's a great day without having to add to the budget next year and I'm very impressed with it. So I'll turn it over to Sterling or. - Me? Yep, thank you. - Director, thank you. - Thank you very much. So, my last comment is, we are excited to build this workforce, to serve our state. I wanna point out you can go to, if you're interested in joining an elite employer and the best DHS or Human Services Agency in the country, you can go OKDHS.org/careers and look at available positions and understand more about how to engage. Or you can just call me, I'm happy to talk with you about it, so. That's all we have. Feel free to ask any questions that may arise. We'll do our best to answer them. Yeah, Aaron? - I'm sorry, say it again. - [Aaron] I'm sorry, what's the overall cost? - Yeah, the overall cost is 10.8 million dollars from a budget, annual budget respective. - [Woman] Not including 400 vacant positions. You're adding 450 from some of our focused positions. What does it mean by consolidate 950 vacant and equally fund. - I'm not sure, I'm sorry say it again? Consolidate 950? - [Woman] Yes, consolidate 950? - Yeah, I think it's just the combination of those two things, I didn't see that particular message. Yep. Well our team is here around, so if you have questions feel free to ask them. We are, we're proud to be here and standing shoulder to shoulder with our team, with DHS, so, thank you very much.