- 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.