In the News: January 2012

(MUSIC PLAYS)
Mark Beutler: Hello everybody. Welcome to In The News.
I'm Mark Beutler from the Office of Communications. 
I hope your new year is off to a great start.
Today we want to take you to the December 6th Human Services Commission meeting.
As usual the Commissioners were presented information from Division Directors 
and Agency Director Howard Hendrick.
With numerous issues to consider each month, the Commissioners'
own research and experience is supplemented by these updates.
Director Hendrick spent a few minutes presenting an overview of the current status of the Agency.
One of the major topics was the future of the Southern and Northern Oklahoma Resource Centers.
These institutions have been home to some of Oklahoma's most vulnerable citizens for many decades.
The age of the facilities, reductions in revenue and reductions in allocations have forced change 
to come to these residential centers for people who have developmental disabilities.
Director Hendrick: We've tried to listen to the desires of residents and their family members.
We've tried to listen to staff regarding their vision for the care of the residents.
We've developed a plan that is feasible for what is foreseeable, 
not necessarily for every future contingency. I want to make that point.
The main purpose of this plan is to try to get as far down the road as we can get down the road 
without overdriving our headlights, so to speak. Things change.
We want to recognize that the situation is difficult for all involved 
and the preferences are mutually exclusive.
We can't both avoid capital costs and continue the same level of operation.
Those are mutually exclusive options so...
That's, those are main challenges that we'll have to work out.
In other words, there's probably no way you're going to make people happy 
because there's only one option or the other in terms of what is to be accomplished.
The plan describes the current structure and status 
of the operations including the conditions of the properties.
It describes alternative service array available for residents who will leave
and describes how priorities will be established for persons who may choose to move from SORC to NORCE.
It describes the process by which input was secured from stakeholders to develop the plan.
And includes appendices that describe Home and Community Based Waiver services
and how safety and service quality are assured in delivering home and community based services.
Other plan highlights: It describes future residential arrangements for residents who move.
Those will include Specialized Homes, Medical Support Homes, Comprehensive Support Homes,
and a placement at SORC or NORCE. So, we're not closing either facility.
The plan calls for continuing to operate the facilities based upon those properties 
which presently meet the Life Safety Codes, as we believe they will exist on August 13, 2013.
Mark Beutler: Director Hendrick went on to explain the options
the residents will be directed toward and a little about the future of the employees.
Director Hendrick: For the employees, there's an attempt here to try to do as well as we can 
by the employees who have worked there and care and have relationships with residents.
Some employees will be retained at both campuses to care for the residents who remain.
SORC's population will be reduced to 15.
The administration at SORC will be merged with either the area office, state office or NORCE.
Some employees who perform services that are needed to support
community placements will be moved to community services, like
training, case management, client advocacy, etc. 
Direct Care and Nursing staff who care for persons who will be moving to newer residential arrangements 
will receive two incentive payments to become employed by the community provider to care 
for the former residents.
One is a health care stipend upon separation and a second payment that's proposed is 
a continuity of service stipend paid after six months of employment 
with the provider caring for the former resident.
Mark Beutler: Later in this meeting James Nicholson presented a detailed version of the plan.
The plan was given to the Commissioners and was presented to the Legislature January 1st.
Another important topic the Director covered is the high cost of funding retirement 
and benefit packages for OKDHS employees.
Director Hendrick: Just a little FYI on benefit costs, I think one of the things that I'm very sensitive to 
right now is the challenge we have to pay our staff something. 
I think we all wanted to do for them and I thought it would be helpful for you 
to look at just these set of numbers.
The long and short of this is: if you look at what we spent in 2005 on health insurance 
and the employee benefit allowance you can see we spent about $45 million in 2005,
and in 2011 we spent $85 million.
You can also see for retirement costs in 2005, we spent $23 million 
and last year we spent almost $40 million.
None of these increases involve appropriations from the Legislature.
You can see that in 2005 the statutory mandate for agency match for employees was 10%.
Remember, employees pay about 3.5% so together employees and the agency in 2005 were paying
13.5% of payroll for retirement costs.
That has gradually been increased over time to 2011 at 15.5% and 2012 it's 16.5%.
So, we've had a 6.5% of payroll increase just in retirement costs in the last six years 
and not to mention all the health care costs.
So, when people talk about the economy recovering and jobless recovery and those things, 
we're not exempt from anybody else. 
But my point is, the wider the gap gets between what it costs to hire somebody 
and what that person can take home means there's going to be less jobs for a while.
Until we lower that gap so people could actually hire people for less money 
or people can take home more money we're going to have, probably a more difficult economy for a while.
So, one of the things I'm an advocate of, for our staff at least, even if we don't get any more, 
even if we get a flat budget, which we probably will, maybe a slight reduction given the fact 
that we have quite a bit of one-time money in our 2012 budget that we won't have available 
for 2013's budget, I still think we ought to do something for our employees 
if we can get the Legislature to agree that the amount of contributions
to the Public Employees Retirement System is excessive 
for what is necessary to fund the retirement plan.
Mark Beutler: If you would like to see Director Hendrick's presentation in its entirety, 
please look for the Commission Report link on this web page.
That's all we have for you this month. We'll be back in February with more news.
In the meantime, remember to take care of each other and yourselves.
Our state is a better place because of the work you do each and every day.
Happy New Year. We'll see you next time.