Senate Standing Committee on Labor and Technology

Calling to order the Joint Committee on Ways and Means and Labor and Technology. So this afternoon we'll hear from two departments. The first is going to be Department of Human Resources Development, who will present their biennial budget requests. So, good afternoon. Happy New Year.

Good afternoon. Happy New Year. Chairs Dela Cruz and Aquino and Vice Chairs Mori, Walkie and Lee, and the Members of the Committees on Ways and Means in Labor and Technology. My name is Brenna Hashimoto and I'm the Director of the Department of Human Resources Development.

Before I proceed with our budget presentation, I'd like to introduce the Members of the D HERD team here with me today. First of all, I have our new Deputy Director, Brian Ferruto, who's been with D Herd for about seven months now.

Behind me is Eric Nita, our Labor Relations Division Administrator, Jennifer Maury Kilby, our Employee Claims Division Administrator Reynelle Yee, our Employee Relations Division Administrator, Signe Nakamura Direza, who is our EEO Officer, Heather Ching Manzano, our employee Staffing Administrator, Kevin. Patty.

Takeda, our lead recruiter, Mark Tagashi, our Administrative Services Officer, Joy Inouye, Compensation Manager Doreen Kuroda, our benefits manager, Patty Mcdonald, our training manager, Kylie Sashima. From our Classification Branch, Derek Tanigawa, Personnel Transactions Manager.

In addition, we have Diane Odo, who's on loan from the Department of Labor and with the Hale MUA program, and then also my assistant, Erin Connor. We also have from the Office of Wellness and Resiliency from the Governor's office, led by Director Tia Hartzock University. I'm going to give her some time.

At the end of my presentation to present her budget request.

Okay. But statutorily, she's still attached to dhs, so.

Not quite. Not yet. I think they still reside in the Governor's office at. At this current moment. So that's the. What, she'll present her rationale for perhaps transferring their program?

No, but that's. This not the appropriate place for that. Okay. This is for. For budget requests.

There are budget requests?

Yeah, so. Because that is going to be in a Bill, so that discussion can happen when the Committee hears the Bill.

Okay. Before I talk about our budget requests, I'd like to take a moment to provide the committees an update on some of our department's accomplishments over the past year. First of all, hopefully you've all seen our Act 57 report.

It's the annual report we submit to the Legislature on the status of vacancies and some other projects that are top of mind for D Herd. First of all, the good news is that the state vacancy rate has come down. This is the first time since the. The inception of the Act 57 report in 2019.

I think you folks are all familiar. I've been talking about it for the last two years. The vacancies were climbing. Last year we were at 27%. This past year we brought it down to 24%. And hopefully that trend will continue.

Not only did we replace the 1150 employees who resigned or retired from government, from state government, but we also added another 320 new hires. So we have a net gain of 320 new hires to the state.

Where. Which departments.

They're all over. All over the Department. So which.

Which departments did best does go into.

Detail in terms of which departments have made improvements on their vacancy rates. But it's, you know, it's kind of like.

You don't have a summary.

No, I don't have it here. I mean, I do in the report. I mean we could talk about it specifically if you'd like to.

No, you can go on then.

Okay. I think progress can be attributed to several things, including our recruitment staff and the efforts of our ARBIT project team, our marketing efforts and the efforts of many departments to make recruitment a top priority. And I will discuss those issues as I go through our budget asks.

In FY24, we had a substantial increase in interest in state employment. We were up to over 30,000 applications received for civil service jobs in FY24. And our staff screened and qualified or determined qualifications for over 25,500 applicants. The positive gains that we've seen in these areas are attributed.

Attributed to the additional resources that you folks have provided De Herd. And it has enabled us to promote the state as an employer of choice. And for that we are enormously grateful. In terms of our own vacancy rate.

Two years ago we first addressed, when we first addressed your committees, D Herd was a Department of 90 FTE and we had nearly 30 vacancies. Earlier this week I ran the same report and we're up to 87 employees and our vacancy rate is around 17%. So we're making progress in our own Department.

We still have some staffing challenges in our classification branch, but we continue to recruit actively for all of our vacancies. With that said, I'd like to just go through our budget asks if I.

Could now table six.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. So our first request is for. Maybe I should preface this by saying HRD has two budget program. It's. The first one is HRD 102, which is essentially all of our Divisions. And then we also have HRD 191, which is the Director's office, as well as our administrative services office, our information technology staff.

It's a very small group. So most of our requests pertain to HRD102. The first one is we're requesting $581,321 in each of the two fiscal years in order to make adjustments to our budget for payroll costs. And the reason being, I mentioned that earlier, that we had long standing vacancies.

And the result of that happen from the vacancies is that we do not get collective bargaining increases for vacant positions. So when positions are left vacant for prolonged periods of time, the salaries and when we go to fill them, we have insufficient funds for those positions in order to fill them at the fully authorized level.

What that results in is that we often have to downgrade positions to lower levels to bring folks in. But then we have to be prepared to raise the pay up as those individuals gain more experience and are contributing at those higher levels. We need to be able to pay them what the collective bargaining salary schedules dictate. Additionally.

So of our roughly 100 positions, about 45 of them are what we deem to be underfunded. And that's significant. About 28 of the 45 are staff level positions. So we're talking about HR specialists and technicians.

And then 17 of them are managerial positions where we've also found that our staff are lagging behind in terms of the salary schedule. They tend to be at the lower level of the salary schedule.

We would like the flexibility to move folks who are really considered to be experts in their fields and not only experts in D heard in the state, but the entire state. The other jurisdictions also heavily rely on D Herd's level of expertise in hr. I can point to many examples of the staff sitting behind me.

Where the other jurisdictions reach out, they follow the program and they also follow suit. And to recognize that level of expertise and to continue to be able to compete with other jurisdictions, we need to be able to be fully funded in order to make those important hires.

The other thing I'd like to just point out Is of the Act 57 report also includes a table of rates of employees, civil service employees eligible to retire in the next five years. Dean Herd leads that list at 37%. So 37% of our staff can retire. In the next five years, which means that's. That's concerning for me.

Right? I don't want to have to replace any of these people sitting behind me, but that's, you know, that's not realistic. We eventually folks do want to move on and have a life after government work.

So I need to be aware of how I'm going to try to replace those people and I probably will end up having to pay more. So this budget request is looking not only the short term but also the next three to five years as well. Okay, our next budget request is number two is for HRD 191.

We're requesting 584,647 in FY26 and 652,400 in FY27. And this is to essentially recover our existing costs for our software as a service. So Sas, we actually have four contracts, four primary contracts where D Herd services the entire state. And those are two contracts that we have with Oracle for our human resources management system.

Basically PeopleSoft, you folks are familiar with how basically the data flows from our HR system into payroll, into various other systems. So it's absolutely critical to the operations of the state that we maintain these contracts. So we have two contracts with Oracle.

One is our human resources information system which is basically our electronic personnel records for every state employee as well as every state position. Then we have a second contract with Oracle to allow every state employee access to the HIP system. I think your folks are familiar, right?

Employees can access their paychecks and they can submit their leave requests online and do a bunch of other things. All of that is made possible through this portal or self service portal. That's a separate contract to give every state employee a license and D Herd manages those contracts. We also have contracts with NeoGov which.

Is our state system that we use. For recruiting and onboarding all state civil service positions and exempt positions as well. And then our fourth contract is with Adobe and that's how we deliver on demand training content to our 17,000 state employees.

It's things like ethics training and training and workplace violence as well as a whole host of content that we can deliver more effectively through an on demand platform. So all of my point is all of these services are not just to, to support deher but to support the entire state.

Unfortunately our budget right now for SAS is $430,000, whereas the costs just in this fiscal year have gone up to $924,000. So that's a difference of $493,000. That is basically near operating budget.

Why did they increase the cost so much? So you were eating it out of place.

We will actually get, we will have no more in order to cover because the cost escalates. I think on average it goes up depending upon the. The vendor.

Right. If you're covering it now from what current expenses or vacancies?

Other current. And we had a little bit of. Money, so we had some.

Is it because other current expenses are coming in too? So you're already covering it?

Well, this year the way that we've been able to cover it is we got a temporary infusion of cash because we were able to move some of the monies that we had for. We were able to pay on one of the HR housing contracts with those money. So that gave us a little push in this year.

But we will not have a. That was just one time question.

So what is your total annual cost then? Is it going to escalate every year or is this 548,000, what she's saying 900 a 90.

What is the cost this year in FY25 is going to be 924.

So the base is 400.

So this is adding every year. Yeah. So typically what we've seen and I think part of our. The information that we submitted on. Try to find detail, but we typically see between 4 and a half to 8% increase every year in the subscription. Subscription cost. So it's not. It doesn't say static.

Every year there's a price of 4 and a half to 8%. We've been absorbing those increases for a very long time. We're at critical part now where we just cannot any longer afford to absorb.

Is that something that can be negotiated though?

I don't believe so. Yeah, we do. We do go through procurement. So it's. But in order to change systems, it's terribly destructive. I mean you don't just change HLMs. Right. There's like. That's like a terrible year. In order to change a platform as massive as PeopleSoft, we've been using it since I believe 1990.

So it's integral to our entire operation, not only for HR but for budget, for payroll. And.

So you're more comfortable with just keeping the same system and upgrading it versus trying to find a new one that could be better.

I think this is part of a kind of a larger discussion that we're having not only with within D Herd, but also it impacts ETS because they're the ones that support the software. We pay the Bill, but they provide the technical support.

So it's a conversation that needs to be had between several different budget and finance ETS and dags. And those conversations are starting. Right. We've been talking about erp, efs. So I think there is a possibility that we may make changes, but we're not ready at this point in time. That's probably going to be a couple years.

You know, since you're on the program. ID. 191. The variance report didn't show any measurements of effectiveness for the program. ID. So if you can take a look at that.

I know we recently changed some of them because they didn't seem to be terribly.

Effective.

Not effective. But they didn't really speak to how. We would, how we would measure effectiveness. So we did work with budget and finance. And I think there is a transition period, though, where we close out the old measures and then start new measures.

Yeah. We've had discussions in the past about reviewing all the variance reports to see if what is being asked and what outcomes we want is relevant to what we're trying to accomplish.

Right.

Because the report has just become something that departments just do without even thinking of the bigger goals. Absolutely. The bigger picture and the statutes. I'm not sure how it got. So.

So we did that and we found. That the old measures were not really indicative of anything that was important to us or I think important to you folks as well. So we did make changes, but usually you put them into place at the beginning of the biennium. Right. And then you report on them.

You make estimates at the beginning of the period. And then after, periodically after the first year, we'll report back on those measures and let you folks know how we've done some of those. You made those changes.

Do they go into the bnf, you know, so that the reporting on the budget.

I don't know exactly. I mean, I would defer to BNF on the mechanics of that. But my understanding is the way it works is we still report on the old ones until the new ones are put into place. We kind of close those old ones out.

And then when the new ones get put into place, which I believe would be for the coming biennium, then we'll report on the $41. That's my understanding.

Okay. Number three.

Number three is for HRD102. We are requesting $112,186 in FY26 and $211,572 in FY27 to add two positions and funds for our Personnel Transactions Office. These are positions that we currently have in dehrd, and they're funded. They're exempt positions that are funded through ARPA minutes that I mentioned previously.

And these positions we plan to continue funding them for through the middle of the first biennium, at least first year of the biennium, continue using the ARPA funds. But as you folks know, the ARPA lendings will be going away and we do find that these positions will be critical as we move towards EFS Enterprise financial system.

Obviously the goal is that all of our systems will be able to talk to each other and these two business analyst positions, that's their area of expertise is PeopleSoft and how to use the data and maximize the use of data.

I could talk about what, what they've accomplished already, but the work that they do is going to be critical as we move into EFS and erp.

We don't really have the bench within DEHR to take on a project like that and to dedicate resources to be able to contribute the way that we think we're going to need to contribute because HR is such a critical part, part of the state's financial picture that it's essential that we have a presence and that our data is valid as we move forward.

Next request is similar. It's for HRD102 and these are the ARFA project positions that we currently have in our staffing division. They're the folks that have been doing the outreach, monitoring. Hopefully you've seen us advertising. We've been advertising in, on the bus, in the theaters, in the malls, at uh, athletics.

We've been hired, we signed a contract with LinkedIn. We have a presence on LinkedIn, all of those marketing and outreach activities, it originates with this ARPA project team.

And so in order to continue to be able to manage those contracts to do the outreach, this team has, along with our staffing folks have either participated or hosted over 40 recruitment.

So these six people are new people?

No. So we have five of them. There are five ARPA funded project positions. One are our recruitment lead who's here today? Patty.

And the positions were created by. Because you're creating positions, we're actually.

Our intent is to convert the positions. So they're. Right now they're exempt positions funded through AHFA funds. We would like to bring.

These are special project positions that the government created. Yes. The same with the previous.

Yes. Right. And we would like to add one more position to the team and it's in order to do certification. So certification is kind of the front end processes around recruitment and also the back end. So this clerical support, technical support will help the team with recruitment activities that they're assigned.

Are these different than the eight positions we gave you last? Yes, they are so the eight positions from last year is still in the staffing division.

Yes. So those, it's. It was actually seven positions and we are recruiting for those though the function of those positions is primarily to make sure that we're, we can speed up the recruiting, the announcement of job vacancies and the screening process. Right. So the list can get, the names can get out to the dependent faster.

How does that differ than the duties of this, these five or six.

So these are more our forward facing team. So they're the ones that are doing all of the marketing. The contracts for the marketing. These are here.

You have these bodies now, but seven from last year you still didn't hire.

We filled one and we're currently interviewing for the other positions. We were able to fill one position internally and the others are under current. Like I said, they're going to be doing the screen speed of the screening. And this team also, they also have a hand in mentoring and outreach to our Heliomua interns.

They go through their processes, help them apply for state jobs, explain about state employment. They like I said, They've done over 40 recruitment events in the last year. Some of those we posted, some of them we just attended. They coordinated with other state departments so that we have a substantial presence at these job fair events.

They also are managing our Skillbridge program. So Skillbridge is our agreement with the Federal Department of Defense.

So outgoing military Members and Internet at state agencies for the last three to six months of their military service and the Department of Defense continues to pay their plan benefits and hopefully once they're done with their military service they are ready to apply for state jobs.

So that's all of the work of this Department of project is these kind of innovative creative marketing endeavors to promote.

And this was a prevail budget request. No, no.

This is the first time you're seeing it. And the reason is because ARPA funds will be lapsing.

Yeah, I know, but why didn't you ask this for the five positions or six positions? Because it sounds like you. What's happening in some departments is the Governor is creating special project positions. You guys don't want it to go away.

Special funds or federal funds are now being, you know, are expiring and so now you want General funds, but you never came through the front door anyway. There's like a back door to go get special project.

You hire somebody and then now you're asking us to keep them there when you never asked us to establish them to begin with. Do I have a problem with that?

That's true. I mean, I think I. I was very upfront about this two years ago, what my intent was. And I came back and I told you folks that I would come back to you and. And talk about the successes. But you didn't. You start.

You guys went ahead and started doing special project positions and fill them before you came to the regular process in asking us to establish them. Anyway. Okay, next, recruitment.

This has to be a recruitment process. Can you folks work with the University of Hawaii in graduation times? As an example, we had graduation this year at Hilo campus. And there were several. Which line item is we're talking about. The recruitment process that you already. And I think that had to do. With one or two. Right.

Outreach and. But just a suggestion to that. Outreaching your program, your marketing, availability of vacancies.

And reason I say that is because when I attended the graduation, there were several who completed their graduation with certificates, major in forestry, and during the time they wanted to remain in Hilo and as a Maui person, and he was asking me, I want to work for the state.

You know, every question that he asked, and I was kind of stunned. But I did say go on site and do that. But just a suggestion that you folks on the graduation time, just send your notes to the University for all your graduates on whatever positions you have available. That's.

That's available so they don't have to ask us again later how can we go and apply for state positions. So since you're doing the recruitments, do that as well, particularly during graduation periods in advance.

Okay, thank you for that. Part of our recruitment strategy for the coming year is to do more events on the neighbor islands. So thank you for that.

Yeah. And you know, we got community colleges.

Too, their graduates on all islands. So Brian spent many years in the community college, and so he's been actually very helpful in finding his venues.

Well, that's part of what we were seeing with community colleges last year is that's where CTE and AA get into the state. But we still haven't lowered the MQs requiring a bachelor's.

Okay, next one. Thank you. Thank you.

Number five.

Number five is we're requesting $41,350 in FY26 and $111,250 in FY27 to support our purchase of salary surveys and compensation analytics.

We have been using some ARPA monies to pay for some of these subscription costs for this current fiscal year, and we'll be able to cover part of the cost for next fold Year and part of the money has gone to pay for pay equity and salary survey analytics. So one of our.

One of our challenges is that we don't have good market data within the state. So we need to rely on outside sources in order to determine whether we need to pay more for certain jobs. So that's one of our challenges. So this additional Fund will help us first of all to pay funds for.

Training for our compensation team of three. It will also allow us to purchase compensation analytics and survey data as well as to continue to pay for membership in the Hawaii Employers Council and to use their resources to get salary survey which we. You funded last year. And we.

We did become Members and so we'd like funds to continue that. It was just for one year last.

Year and chair regarding ARPA funds. The expire end of the year. Yeah. This year. Yeah. The ARPA funds don't. They expired. Yeah. So they already expired. zero, I thought it goes to the end of this year. I may be wrong.

Okay, number six, next we are asking. For an augmentation of our budget to manage our workers comp claims. So I think most of you know that D Herd manages all the workers compensation claims centrally for all state agencies. And so we, our. Our base budget is 10. About $10,484,000.

We've typically had to come in over the last many, many years years either for an emergency appropriation and in more recently we've been able to get some ARPA monies. And then even more recently you folks gave us additional funds in the last biennium. However, we're coming back to make sure. That those funds can continue.

And essentially we use all of the. Funds that you folks give us for workers.

Compared how many workers comp claims were a result or were because of telework or from telework employees?

I don't know that we.

You got to speak in the mic. You can state your name. You can go on that side.

So Jennifer Mar is the administrator of our employee claims division.

Good afternoon chairs. I'm Jennifer Mori Kilby. I'm the administrator of the employee claims division. In the last couple years there has been no claims from teleworking. Do you want me to go on?

Sounds like you. You wanted to go on.

So overall, I mean our highest number of claims fall in jobs that are normally physically active, such as General laborers, janitors, ACOs, those who report to work on a regular basis.

And you have a percentages of what.

Right now with me? What?

No, you have it. I mean you can send it to us later.

I can bring you percentages of a breakdown where that's.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, if it's majority janitors, then that's something that we gotta find.

Yes.

You know, you want to help the. You don't want to. The guys who are doing those kind of grunt work, they. We want to make sure that they're compensated if they got injured.

Yes. Does your division do any training so that you can prevent these injuries? In the past, but do you have that in part of your purview to help?

Departments to help employees do more in terms of prevention.

Yes. So we actually do go out now, or there's trainings online that we do direct departments to go to. When there's a high rate of injuries in a certain area, we have a safety person who actually goes to the sites to check to see if there's anything that could be adjusted in the area.

So a recent example is the Department of Transportation airports. There was a door that people kept getting injured on. The safety person went out, checked on the door, made recommendations, did a formal reporting, is checking up with the Department to ensure they implement those adjustments.

And for that particular situation, I'm only mentioning it because it was just recently, it was something simple like just put WD40 on the door to make sure it swings better because it was just tight.

And we need how many layers of processes to just determine that.

Well, it's not a layer of process. There was just a high injury rate. But it's also to protect the Department and the state for the fact that people, I think, were using the door as their reason of getting injured. So now we have documentation to prove that the door itself is an average weighing door that was fixed.

So for future incidences that do occur, we have now this layer in a different way to say, well, we made these adjustments. How is this possible? And it gives workers compensation, an ability to question the situation with facts.

You keep data on that, like we did this training or we did this assessment or consultation and then what's the injury rate or what's the outcome of that impact?

Yeah, we have not kept exactly what you're asking for. Like, for example, if we did this type of training, what the outcome is.

But shouldn't you. So that if we know, if not, you're doing the training, it may not make a difference?

Yes, we can. No.

Why do things that you think are not going to. You feel they make a difference.

So the implementation of having somebody go out more often or even having more trainings available is something, believe it or not, kind of new.

But if you keep track, then you know which ones are effective and you don't do that. And then the ones effective, you keep doing it and expanding it.

Yeah. So, I mean, we keep track of. One of the newer things we've been doing is ergonomics trading. So we keep track of that because that's one of our bigger ones that we have identified is a strong need because we have a lot of office workers who have outdated equipment.

And so even that, it's not just when they get injured. We're doing things where departments can call our office and we will go down to prevent injury because maybe they're concerned that people are using older desks. What can they do? Some of the recommendations are not costly. Sometimes it's just you need to put.

One of our favorite ones is those old metal desks. I don't know if you guys are wearable. So the desk actually is too high for most people when you're typing.

So if you pull out the drawer and you put like a cover and you put your keyboard there, it becomes ergonomically sound because now your, your body is at a 90 degree angle or your arms are a 90 degree angle. So it's just putting out things like that for departments or their staff and teaching them.

But we actually do have an ergonomics training that is on a regular basis that people or anyone can sign up for. So you guys should come.

You keep a record of who you go to. We go to attendees and you have a kind of a report of that that you keep.

We can pull a report. When I said we haven't, it's the latter. Like exactly what happens thereafter. You know, like for example, if 100 people from say DHS went to an ergonomics training.

We are not keeping statistics of that hundred people, what happens per se thereafter or what division they work at and what happens at that exact division. But we are capable. So could you. Yes. Okay.

That would be good to do.

Okay.

Okay. Number seven. Oh, go ahead.

Thank you for recommending what is the longest for the state, what division?

The longest workers compensation claim that I am aware of that is still active, that is not categorized as a medical maintenance file. And I have to preface that because medical maintenance files basically work comp world is. Sorry, let me digest. In workers compensation, someone can have a claim open indefinitely because the law supports it.

So someone, after settlement, returning back to work can have a claim open as long as they need medical treatment. So we have claims from, believe it or not, the 80s. But when we say like an active case or when I reference an active.

Reason why is that you guys don't have enough people to go look into them. But I, I know one particular case from my community been on for 15 years, workman's comp. He got hurt, but he still goes to the gym, workout, lift weights, everything that you can think of. Are you still on workman's computer?

Go back to work, fall off a chair, call and claim the injury. We go back out on records. Come. So what kind of parameters we have to stop this kind of illegal activity because it's illegal.

I don't care if you're going Doctor is your best friend being on reckless come for 15 years and the state don't do nothing about it. There's no investigation, no follow up. That's.

That's hardship on the Department and I know what Department it is and that's a lot of their will fix up the place by using workman's comp money to pay workman's comp. So that's the reason why I'm asking what kind of parameters and how long is too long.

So since I became the administrator a couple years ago. Too long is for me. I mean a claim shouldn't be open longer than two years.

Yeah, because I don't understand when they make the claim and then they leave the medical open for life. Well we understand that but not collecting compensation for half of your life.

Yes. So part of why we need more money is to fight claims. It is costly. So there are methods.

Senator Kidani and Senator Kim said we'll do it for free. Just give us the file.

To go investing.

So yes, the cost to investigate a claim to hire counsel because it does end up at a higher level for things like fraud. It gets very expensive for the state. Believe it or not, we have made great efforts to tackle what you were talking about.

So the last time I actually sat before you and spoke our average claim count open for a year was about I think 14-1,500. Today we're at 1,200 where as I talked to you today we have about 870 cases actually open.

So we have made great strides to diligently work on cases to close them very quickly because it has been saving the state money. But to do so again there's this back end cost that we're running into.

Do you have an investigator on staff?

How about that? We don't have an investigator for the state. This is services you have to contract out to get.

But if you have 1,400 open claims.

No, she's saying 800 now.

800.

The AG do you refer to the AG.

That I actually am not sure. The I've been in workers comp. For 15 years. I mean I've never met anyone in fraud.

And so they have investigators.

Oh yes. So we have counsel that deals with the actual fraud situation. But surveillance, you know.

But how do you prove fraud unless you surveil and you.

So surveillance. We go your contractor for the actual fraud portion. We do have attorneys working on it.

But these are investigators with the AG not attorneys. Investigators look into stuff like that okay.

We can look into it.

I mean, how would you use all the resources available?

Yes. Don't you pay for the AG support for your Department and they can do some of this if you have a working arrangement with. To investigate.

We, we do not have an agreement with them currently.

Maybe you should look into it.

It's not like they have to check out all 800. I mean, you guys working in the Department, you kind of know which one is kind of like maybe potential red flags that you guys can submit to get the. The process. Because the guy on 15 years. I might be a red flag. You know what I mean?

You know, you can go check them out at 24 hours fitness and you know he's on an injury, but he can still lift weights. You know, that might be a red flag.

You must, you must see him at the gym when you go there.

I don't go to the gym, but when I'm going to the restaurant to by the gym.

Of claims. Open claims in the year, how long it's been when the claim was open and. And what the status. Like how many years by length of open cases.

We do have that information, but it would be confidential because employees, medical records and you just want a list of.

A list of open claims. We don't need the name by Department. Maybe.

Okay, we can send that in writing. Yeah. So if you went down from was it 50 over 15,000 to now 1500. 1500. To 800.

If you want to say 15,000 to.

If you went down, if you reduce it almost by half, then why do you. Why are you asking for more money?

No, no. So there's active claims in a year. So active claims are claims that we have to touch. So we close just as many claims that come in that we are getting. So if we get in 400 cases, we're closing a little bit more than 400. That's how we get the active like current open cases so Low.

So the number at the 800 is technically like today. If I ran a report, that's how much cases are in. But if I ran a report for the fiscal year of how many cases we actually had to touch is like 1200.

What's the average number of cases you get in every month?

I don't know every month. Because every month changes for the year then. So it's about 400.

400 new ones every year?

Yes, but it's part of the reason. So before we used to get between 5 to 600. But part of the reasons why the number is down is we actually now take the Initiative to call every injury employee to touch base with them to make them aware of the workers compensation system.

We believe that by doing that it creates presence which now puts them on alert that we are monitoring them very closely. So even in those efforts, though some of them will tell us, I do not want a claim. We want this just for medical records.

So about 100 of them we never have to open up based on the employee's request in the past.

That was never done.

No, I cannot speak for other people, but I'm not sure.

Okay. Okay. Number seven.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Number seven is a request for HRD 191. This is. We're requesting $250,000 in each of the next two fiscal years and it's to initiate a phased to Department wide furniture replacement. De herd occupies five floors of the state office tower. We have been there since the mid-90s.

We occupied it right after the Legislature vacated to move back while the Legislature, the capitol was being renovated. And then we moved in and I think we still have the same furniture that was left behind.

Maybe we'll give you the capital furniture and capital. We'll get new furniture.

It's showing its age. You know, at first blush, I think some of you have probably been to our offices. It looks okay, but it's, it's things like, you know, health and safety that's a concern. Things are starting to not function properly. We've got some folks, especially in our staffing area where we've grown.

We're out, we've grown out of this.

You're grown because all those special project positions.

That's right. So we need to make space for them and we, we just need to make things more efficient and, and, and nice for our staff too. We, we don't discount the effect that good a work environment has on retention. And, and it's not only our staffing floors, but the other floors are in need of a facelift.

And so our, our plan is hopefully to be able to do this incrementally over the next few years and then how many.

Well, I can, I haven't to do the first phase but in regards to telework though, because if we're going to buy new furniture, those who are, you know, predominantly teleworking, they should be hoteling.

So we, I think if you looked at our report, we've got about a dozen people who telework and we only allow it up to two days a week. No Mondays, no Fridays. So we have between 1 and 2 days. But we have folks in the office primarily, especially like Jen's shop. They're in the office every day.

Our staffing folks are predominantly in the office every day.

That's fine. But I'm just talking about the furniture part. So when. How do you reconcile teleworking with new furniture and hoteling?

We, we are not tele. Hoteling at the moment because we don't need to, you know, we. Our offices, because all of the information we deal with is essentially confidential information. It's not easy for us to just allow another office to come and occupy our space. So like I said, we have those five floors. There's a couple of.

There's one office in particular that is housed like the chief negotiator, the Office of Collective Bargaining, and some staff from the governor's office, but absent that. And they have like, their separate entrance and is segregated from us. But otherwise, you know, we take up the space. We.

We have and we, we don't have a need right now to hoteling because we have adequate work stations. We just need to refresh them.

So how is the request got reduced, right?

Yes, it did.

From 1.4 million to 250,000 in two years? Yes. So with the 250, how is that gonna accomplish what you're talking about?

Well, we'll have to do like a floor at a time. We did. Deputy Director Furuto, he did get a quote recently for our staffing division. You want to talk about?

Yeah.

Hi. Brian Furuto, Deputy Director. So the, the initial request was roughly for 1.4 million. That was based off of industry costs about a year ago. Surprisingly, we recently had some ARPA funding that we plan to do. Some of the furniture on one of our floors, it came in dramatically lower. So that's a good thing.

We're, we're hoping, obviously, that the price holds for the next few years because we can't do it all at one time. But, you know, for instance, we were looking at about 15,000, roughly 12,000 per cubicle. That would be about 10,000 for staff, about 15,000 for managers. And the quotes came in without shipping at roughly 4,000.

So, and I only say these numbers not to confuse people, but just to give you an idea, but it's about half of what we were, you know, budgeting with regard to the hoteling. We only have about a dozen, as the Director said.

And those individuals, we, in some ways, it's limited because we don't allow Monday and Friday for telework. So we would essentially only be looking at three days in which people would have to share desks and there would be some conflict. Plus, with only a dozen, I don't necessarily know if that's.

We could find an efficient way for us to share desks with only a dozen.

Okay, 10.

Our next request is for HRD 102. We are asking for an additional position and $32,954 in FY26 and $59,808 in FY27. This would be for an administrative assistant for. In our labor relations division. Historically, labor relations was part of our employee relations. And so they had a combined Division Chief and secretary. Many years ago, they.

They split apart. One is on the 12th floor, one is on the 14th floor. But they still share what we used to call secretaries. We've retitled this series. So now we call them administrative assistance.

But it's essentially a clerical support for two divisions on two different floors, complicated by the fact that now we have a chief negotiator, which we're super happy about, but we also support that position as well. And during times like now where we're negotiating with.

For 14 new bargaining units, it's a tremendous amount of work for one individual to handle both actually three different programs simultaneously. So this is a request to provide a separate secretary administrative assistant for our labor relations division and collective bargaining.

So is this a live body now or.

Look, we do have one person, but she would. No, but this new position. This is position. Yes. Okay, next is for HRD 191. We're asking for $30,000 in each of the two fiscal years for HRD training and professional development. We sincerely appreciate your support last year and giving us some monies to do some training and travel.

And we'd like to build on that. As I've mentioned before, D herd managers and staff are expected to be experts in their areas. And that requires that we keep their skills current, that they know best practices, that they're capable of advising and troubleshooting and assisting our departments. And we also serve as experts statewide.

And so to support their professional development and training is important to our management team. Lastly, I have. The last request is for HRD 102. And we're asking for $1.0 million in FY26 to launch a classification and compensation study.

I know you folks have mentioned many times to me and I have not forgotten that we need to make progress on reviewing our class specifications. We've put a tremendous amount of effort and resources in addressing the recruitment part. But that's only part of the puzzle.

The Other piece is that we really need to have an in depth, comprehensive look at our structure of civil service, how it's laid out, how all of the different marketing units are, are intertwined and how we can better manage it moving forward. And as well as to look at the minimum qualification requirements.

I could name many classes of work where I think we need to make progress, but we simply don't have the staff right now. We've got one person in our classification branch that's capable of doing this work in addition to the division administrator.

We just don't have the bandwidth to take on a project of this size and so we need some outside help. So this $1.0 million would allow us to contract with a vendor that could help us re envision the possibilities for civil service, what that might look like.

Whether we take on certain bargaining units that are high priority first, or we look at certain departments and try to tackle them one at a time, we're open to any kinds of suggestions that would move the needle. But like I said, we really don't have the capacity internally to do this work.

So having said that, Director, this is priority number 13, but you're bringing up stuff that sounds very, very important. Over the course of the last two years, you've heard from some of my colleagues some of these concerns. So again, but yet it's priority number 13.

So can we justify or what justification do you have that makes this number 13?

Well, I think all the things that we've talked about are, are important. I mean, it's hard to pick one, it's hard to prioritize. Honestly, this is really important. My only hesitation is I know that it's going to be a lot of work.

Even, even if we're not the ones leading the study, we're still going to have to best invest time and effort. Right? The consultants don't operate in a vacuum, which means that one person that I have is going to have a tremendous amount of work on her shoulders and that's my only hesitation.

It's obviously going to be have to involve some other folks in order to make it successful. And that's my only hesitation in not putting it up at the top of the list is that I want to make sure it's successful.

We would only have the monies for one year and obviously I want to be able to report successful results when I come back to you, you know, in a year or more.

And because obviously we're probably going to ask for more funds if we were able to start this project and we need additional funds to look at other bargaining units or other departments or other classes of work, however we decide to tackle this project.

So how did you develop the million?

We did reach out first to the Hawaii Employers Council, which we just recently joined as Members, and we talked to them and got their recommendation. I was hoping that they might be able to help us with this.

They don't have the expertise or the ability to do, to take on the project of this scope and complexity at this time. But they did refer us to another vendor who does do this kind of work.

And our administrator spoke to them and asked them what they would estimate the cost would be and it was, I think I want to say 1200 to $2500 per class of work. So as you folks have heard me say before, we have over 1400 classes of work, civil service, within the state.

So just doing the math, we're looking at, if we were to touch everything, probably closer to three and a half $1.0 million at least. But I think we can, I think we can discount some groups. For example, nurses. I don't think we need to look at nurses. It's a very homogeneous bargaining unit. Homogeneous group.

We pay very well. We have a lot of interest in nurse positions when we recruit. So perhaps they're, they're not a priority. Same with our Executive, our excluded managerial positions. Perhaps we don't need to consider them right away because we do have a lot of flexibility in terms of pay there.

I think I would, if you asked me what my priority would be, I would probably look at bargaining it at 3, then maybe 413. There's a lot of competition for that.

This relate to your annual studies that could be done by the Hawaii Employers Council.

What we're looking for them assistance with is mostly on the compensation side. So they do a number of salary surveys every year and they will do customized salary surveys if we want to pay for those.

So that was our ask last year for a little bit of money to be able to use them to collect the salary survey data. So, for example, we want to know what a particular occupation is being paid in the private sector in Hawaii. They can go gather that information, hopefully for us.

So the work you're asking to do with this $1.0 million or more is the entire classification system.

Yes. Right. So right now, the example that I, I like to use, and sorry to those who've heard me say it before, but for example, we have like seven different levels of accountants everywhere.

From, you know, at the one level, the trainee, the two levels in advanced training, three levels, kind of your, you're not as complex journey worker four level is the more complex projects. A five is usually like highly complex or your working supervisor. 6 may be like a section supervisor or manager and then a managerial level.

Do we really need all those levels? I'm not sure that we need is that efficient or does it just add to the complexity? Because each of those levels we have to determine qualification requirements. We have to keep those current.

You know, so the vendor will be able to say you should consolidate this. You've got too many classes and. And that it could be streamlined a lot more so that we can be able to at least eliminate all the archaic classes that we had as well. And they'll be able to do that perhaps.

You know, we're open. I'm open to any kinds of recommendations. I don't think we have.

So what is the scope. What is the scope of this contract that you're going to give they going to do for us to review.

And that's open for discussion too. I think if ideally we'd look at bargaining unit three first because there's so much variation in bargaining at three jobs that we would probably tackle it by bargaining unit. Because within according to statute and collective bargaining we need to look. We need to keep relationships within the bargaining unit consistent.

So it makes more most sense to me if we look at it bargaining unit by bargaining it and we tackle the MQs, we tackle the requirements can do some pathways work as well and try to kind of flesh that out.

How does a person come from either high school or an associate's degree or a baccalaureate degree and how do we get them into state jobs? Where do they start? Where do they, you know, where can they end up? Because that's part of what civil service, the statute dictates is that we create a career pathway for government service.

So we need, we need help even looking at what degrees are more popular. What is, you know, has the terminology changed? Has the curriculum changed? We need to refresh all of that and we just don't have the capacity to do that with one person.

So. Sure. Can we just have kind of the scope of what you're thinking of with this to be a. You can bring it, send it in.

Well, I think, you know, this seems like it could help with the vacancies, but I think it's just something that is going to take a long time. So I think I have to agree with the chair is that this should be a higher priority.

I think it's hard, but I think the hard stuff is what we have to get done. If we're going to see some type of transformation in government, I think probably it's going to correlate to why are we paying so Low for a certain type of job. And so we're going to have to start consolidating. So I hope.

I agree it shouldn't be priority 13, it should be way higher, probably higher than your furniture at this point. So hopefully we can get this done.

We want to keep the people we have doing the good work that they do. So. No, I hear you and you know, and that's really, it's obviously you folks have a lot of things to consider, a lot of priorities in the state.

We appreciate the support, I appreciate your interest in this because that confirms that it's, you know, it is a priority and to the extent that you know it, it, the weight will fall on our shoulders where we're willing to take it on.

But why did you decide to do it in a way where we would have to hire contractors versus having your own staff constantly reviewing the different units regularly?

It's pretty much just a result of. We just don't simply have the staff right now. We have, in that classification branch, we have I think six vacancies at the moment, including the branch chief as well as five staff level positions. If we were fully staffed we would be able to chip away at this.

But we, it takes years to develop the clinic.

Why not try to fix that?

Well, we are, we're trying to recruit but finding the individuals with this kind of expertise is challenging. It's, it's challenging. We've been recruiting and we're, we're continuing to try to fill those jobs.

We, we had a cohort of some trainees a couple of years ago when we were here and they've sort of since, you know, gone different ways. One became our HR officer, one went to another Department and two moved on to other areas.

So it takes a special kind of person that really wants to dig into that analytical type of work and be able to, to flesh it out. And it, it takes a lot of training in order to do that job analysis and then make those connections to the MQs and the levels. And, and so how much for this?

How much in salary savings are you getting from those positions that are vacant?

I don't know off the top of my head, but we're trying to fill them. It's, you know, it's Deherd, I think is, I've been told we're one of the few departments, maybe only one of two departments we don't typically like cross funds over our salaries. We stay salaries. We don't use our salary savings for other purposes.

Same with our other operating expenses. We don't typically do that.

So you don't have to create special. Positions and you get ARPA funds, so you don't have to do that.

Director, your staff did start working on some of the class reviews though, right? Like, like a few. Right. Or a handful or so.

So that is part of our responsibility. Right. So that organically these requests for changes or amendments to new classes do come from the departments. That's part of their responsibility is when they're, when there are changes in their Department. They need to let us know when the MQ should be modified.

When the job is people who do they let know if you're saying that whole division is vacant.

So they let our one person know. And, and we, we put it in the, the list of tasks that we need to. And, and we don't have a lot of them, actually. We have maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 requests for an amendment or a new class. It's not a lot.

Oh, it's not part of our culture. That's why. Yes, that's the thing. I mean, we all see it, I guess, because we're right, you know, one arm's length removed. But I think when you're in it, you don't realize, hey, I should reevaluate this.

Absolutely. And, and that's part of my frustration is because I know it needs to be done. And sometimes we wait for the departments and they just simply don't have the time or energy to, to do it as well.

So in order to help everybody move things along, we need to invest in this project and then, you know, hopefully we get some staff on board and then they can maintain it. Right. As these individual amendments come in or changes, then we can handle that.

But this kind of wholesale look at everything re envision it kind of work, I don't think we're going to be able to tackle anytime soon. And I feel like it is becoming a barrier to recruiting for certain jobs. I think we, everybody sitting behind me can point to, you know, several that they would like to see changed.

Senator Kim.

Can I follow up since you're talking about recruiting and the vacancies?

Yeah.

Okay, so I'm looking at the vacancy list and I'm just wondering how valid is your fail date? Because almost all of them says 2-1-2025 and some of them say pending list interviews in progress, pending redescription Interviews in progress.

So how, how realistic is 2-1-2025?

I know a couple of them, we have made offers and we do anticipate that they will be accepted from a couple of the positions. Maybe some of them will have to push out a little bit. But all of those that say interview in progress, that's because we have a list and we are interviewing.

So if we are able to find a suitable candidate, then we will be making offers and setting up, doing the onboarding and setting a hire. So the 1-14-2025 is hired.

The very first one.

Was that the first one? Sorry, that's not the first one. It's 102. 1-14-2025.

I believe they are interviewing. I, I, I believe that there was a recommendation. I'm, I'm.

It says 1-14. What is today? 16. And then, because it seems like everything on this list is 1-25 and that's only like what, 10 days away. And then on the last page you have date of vacancy. 11-18-2024. Expected fill date 1-31-2024. So it's not filled. It is filled.

That one. We, we did fill it and then the individual left. So it's back into recruitment.

So when did they leave?

I believe maybe December, end of November.

So how would you have.

So this was back from November. So I think we were obviously optimistic that we would be able to make some progress in a couple months.

But if it was, it was November, then this one would have been filled. Right. It wouldn't be on the vacancy report because you said that person left by the time you did this. They already left.

No. So it became vacant on November 18th. Right. That's the date of the vacancy. So immediately, as soon as it becomes vacant, we try to fill it again. So we ask for another list. This past year. Oh, sorry, it should have said 25. I'm sorry, that's, that's a typo. It's expected fill date should have been 1-31-25.

Of course that didn't happen. But we're continue to recruiting. Why would you have to continue to recruit? Sorry, that is a typo.

I just raised this because every Department gives very aspirational bill dates because they just don't want us to cut it if it's longer than three years. So. Yeah, I'm just trying to get realistic.

Well, I think you can see from our, the date of vacancy that all of our vacancies for the most part are within the last 2022, 2023, 2024. And then we have of course, our new positions, which we're in the progress of filling process of filling at the moment too. Okay, thank you.

So how many, how many vacancies are in your classification branch then?

I think there are six.

And how many employees do you have? How many employees do you have in your classification branch?

Right now we have three. So we have Kylie. Kylie, she gets. Yeah, she's carrying the load. So she has nine. She has two clerical positions or technician in her position to help sort of with the paperwork stuff. But she is the lone person kind of keeping us afloat at the moment.

So to serve the departments, all the departments with requests and you know, looking at the classification, maybe changes as you go along. How many is the full complement? That. So this six plus the three would be a full complement?

No, I thought that was a separate division that would normally do this classification and compensation study.

Yes.

Yes. So it's in our. Our classification branch of which there. I think there are nine positions total. So we have pre filled, including Kylie and six vacancies including the branch chief is vacant and five professional staff that would do this.

The branch chief and all of their staff. So this.

Okay, so you have a compensation and a classification in the division.

How many?

Yes.

So compensation is separate compensation branch. Is Joy here? Joy, she does all the compensation work.

And how many there.

There are three. So Joy's the branch chief and then we have two staff under her and they all fall under the employee relations division.

Okay, so the rest, I guess because it's. Oh, wait, sorry.

Senator, at the appropriate time, can I ask about table 14, contract costs?

Yeah, Director, on page 28 of 45, your contract cost. This is in regards to your recruitment efforts. The second and third line at the end, HRD102, related to LinkedIn and then HRD102 consolidated theaters. Are you. Is the Department planning to go out again for renewal on LinkedIn?

Go ahead.

Yes.

Yes, we are.

Okay.

And then as a follow up to that, has the Department look at other avenues such as social media like Facebook and Instagram to do advertising, because that can be relatively cheap to advertise to a certain.

Aaron Connor. Well, I get it to Aaron Connors.

I mean, just ads. I don't know if you're doing ads on that platform because I know consolidated theaters in this line item, you have six theaters that are selected. I'm not sure how big of a reach you have with things, you know, with at home in streaming that people see. And if you're on these type of.

Platforms, that's A great suggestion and we'll, we'll look into that. Okay.

You mean actually funding social media advertising, correct? Yeah. Versus just a regular.

That's correct. Chair. Thank you for looking into that.

Thanks. I was gonna ask about the same thing. Is there, is there a way to create like a really simple, you know like one liner description that's like digestible for. I think some of the positions being advertised because often while I totally applaud, you know getting onto LinkedIn was huge.

I think even some of the other social media stuff, it's challenging for the average person when it to get excited about like administrative assistant level three, whatever, you know, positions because you're like what the heck is that? Right. Nobody really knows.

But basically make this stuff digestible and understandable to the average person and then underneath it can be like the official designation, you know, whatever.

Okay, we'll take a look at that as well. So part of this is looking at everything. Right. Nothing is off the table. We're willing to entertain any ideas that would make us more effective in recovery. Recruiting and retaining staff. That's the bottom line.

And, and all of my staff know that, that that's what our mission is is to recruit and retain a capable workforce and we're interested in entertaining all sorts of ideas about how to make.

That better regarding that on the different platforms. Whether it's the bus or you know, social media, whatever. Do you have any impact data? So you know we got so many applicants because from various sources.

Good one. To see what you've got. How much through LinkedIn, how much through social media, how much do these. I think I saw at some shopping centers you guys have.

Yes, we do. Yeah.

Malls.

So when I believe Heather, do you have information about that? I don't.

You don't have to present the numbers now. I just, we.

I think you just want to know more comprehensive. Yeah.

We can follow the exact numbers in the.

In a do ask when they, when they apply, where they. How they heard about us.

Yeah. Because then you know if advertising or spending that dollars are actually effective or not.

Yep. So we can share that result with you.

Okay. I noticed the next one that's just, that's not numbered but that's just transferring after number 13.

Oh, yes. So I think you've probably heard us talk before. We have a contract with Risk Connect to do to manage our workers comp claims electronically. We used to do it manually, very manually. And so Jen's team just this month went live with Risk Connect which is workers comp claim software.

The contract resided the contract monies originally, when it was authorized by the Legislature, went to ETS, and there it's really De Herd's. De Herd 's the only user of that. So kind of between the two of us, they would like to give us the money, we're willing to take it and. And maintain the contract.

So this is a request to transfer the funds that have been in their budget to De Herd, and we'll. We'll take on that contracting.

Okay. And then the last. What is that? 1, 2, 3, 4 are all for officers? Almost, yes.

Would you like to hear from Tia?

Well, you know, we still have to make sure if the bill doesn't pass, then this. This kind of mood it is, but.

It is a budget. I mean, I think it's been presented as part of the budget as well. So up to you, if you'd like to hear from her in terms of the rationale for why De Herd makes sense.

No, I told you that rationale. All right. And discussion can be heard through the bill.

Okay.

Because that's a bigger policy question.

Okay.

So maybe what we might want to do is when the bill comes through, you know, we can amend the bill to include all of these items and then have the discussion then.

Okay.

Because if not, it's too premature. And when we. When other agencies like Stadium Authority and ADC got transferred to DBIT, the first year was not in the budget, it was the subsequent year that was in the budget. So this doesn't follow past practice. Okay. Any questions for De Herd? I do. Go ahead.

So Act 186 authorized other departments to conduct their own MQ screening, and they were supposed to send it to you once they did the MQ qualification review. What was a number that has come in to you and with what result?

We actually have not had any departments that have asked for that kind of delegation to date. We've sent out a couple of memos advising them of this opportunity and option, but we haven't had any uptake as of today. We did have a couple of departments who've asked for more ongoing delegation.

So they want to do everything themselves rather than just getting the list after we recruit. They we've had, especially from Department of Land and Natural Resources. They've taken on a number of classes in the last many months, and they usually will just do everything themselves.

So. Including the MQ review?

Yes. So they do full delegation, particularly mostly for classes of work that are unique to their Department.

And what has been the effectiveness of changing the secretary to Admin Assistant? And. And I know it's improved, getting more applicants. And I'm just wondering whether that could be extended to office assistance as well. Or have you thought about that? Because that also is kind of a archaic class.

Let me just look here. So one of the things that we added to the Act 57 report this year is on table seven, on page seven. And this report, I think was transmitted to the Legislature. I believe it's on your website.

It's also on our website, but page seven we've included a column where we've included the number of applicants that we qualified for these kind of largest pool of vacancies. Right. So one of those is for. I believe that was on here. Let me just find it. zero, Administrative assistant, formerly. We put formerly secretary.

So people know that that's what we're talking about. So right now we have 106 vacancies, which is a little more than last year actually. But we've, we've qualified 507 applicants. So that's the number of names that we've sent out to departments. So about, you know, five to one in terms of applicants and vacancies.

Office assistance, that's another office assistance. Okay, so we have 463 vacancies. We've qualified 1,439 applicants.

So we should change the title of that as well.

I don't know that that is kind of a newer title. So this group used to be known as Clerk, Clerk, typist, Clerk steno, and so all of the. Nobody does steno anymore. So we rolled it all into office assistant as kind of a generic catch all for that type of work. It's a relatively new type.

So does it's effective to combine it all and have one title? Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions? I had a question later on, but I'm going to wait till the subject matter here has a discussion on it regarding the delegating of authority to the departments because in some of the budget hearings they're saying it doesn't seem to be quite working.

And you don't have to respond now, but I just want to put it on the record. And then when the subject matter actually hears it, because it's not a budget request, I don't want to really dive into it.

And then we, hopefully when that discussion occurs, we can either tweak the process or, you know, I don't know if it's internal that between the departments and dehurd, that just got to be re looked at. Okay. Any other questions?

Okay, we're gonna just. Okay, sorry. I know we sorry. I know we're gonna move on probably, but you know, for the unemployment, this is something. I don't know if we would answer the phone from you guys office, but we've been trying to get a lot of these people that came to me. They cannot speak good English.

They got. They got let go from one of the hotels in. for various reasons. When they applied for the unemployment, 12 of them got no.

Next. Next. Next hearing.

The next hearing.

Yeah, next. Unemployment, right. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Sorry, sir. Okay. We're going to take a 10 minute recess so that you know, we can transition to Department of Labor. So thank you.

Okay. Calling to order the Joint Committee on Ways and Means and Labor and Technology. So next we'll hear from the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations who will present their biennium budget requests. Good afternoon. Happy New Year.

Good afternoon and Happy New Year. Chair De La Cruz, Vice Chair Aquino and Cherokeno. And Vice Chair Marijuana. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to provide you updates on the Spartan's budget and operations. I'm Jade Butai, Director of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Before I give my remarks, I want to introduce some of the key people who are with me. Like prior budgets, this one is a result of many people working collaboratively and I would like to acknowledge their hard work and valuable contributions. Without their efforts, this budget would obviously would obviously not have been possible.

They all work hard in the dark to shine in the light. I'm grateful for their tremendous efforts and I appreciate all that they do. So when I call your name, please raise your hand. Bill Kunstman, Deputy Director. David Brad Weeks, Legislative Coordinator and Equal Opportunity Officer Lynn Araki, Regan, Administrative Services Officer Francis Kagalo, Council 5.

Kim Nguyen, Human Resources Officer Bennett Yev, IT Manager from our Unemployment Insurance Division and Pereira Yustakiu, Administrator from our Disability Compensation Division, Royden Koiko. He's the Program Support Chief from our Workforce Development Division, Americar Peloton Pretas Administrator J. Ishibashi, Job Training Specialist from our Occupational Safety and Health Division.

Alan Yamamoto, Acting Administrator from our Wage Standards Division, Cheryl Lee, Administrator Mary Imamura, Labor Law Staff Supervisor Peter Lee, Technical Support Staff Specialist from our Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, Marcus Kawatachi, Executive Director. The next person, he needs no introduction.

As many of you have seen and experienced, this great work person is the new Chair of our Hawaii Labor Relations Board, Dwight Takamini. And with him is E. B Young from our Labor Industrial Relations Appeals Board.

Damian Elapante, Chair from our Workforce Development Council, Danette Misalucha, Executive Director from our Hawaii Retirement Savings Board, Alani Yugi, Executive Director and from our State Fire Council, Gary Lum, Administrative Specialist. The deal the DLIR continues to focus on recruitment and retention.

We currently have a vacancy rate of 14% excluding federal positions for which there is no current funding and 89 day hires. During calendar year 2024, we increased our workforce by 10.5% by filling 189 positions while having 128 job separations.

Since the inception of the HELE IMUA program in July 2022, we have placed 619 interns throughout the state, including the DOE. I have to first, say thank you Chair for giving us the resources to implement HELEMOA and portal work that you have done over the years on this program.

To keep Hawaii's talent here 62, or about 10% of those interns have found permanent positions in the state's work workforce. We have hired 17 out of those 62, slightly more than one quarter of the permanent hires.

During fiscal year 2024, we placed 324 heli imoa interns throughout the state thanks to the hard work of our Workforce Development Division, our Human Resources office and our Administrative Services office. I would be remiss chairs if I don't Also to acknowledge one of our heli MOA intern, Genesis Pinks. And you know she's one of your constituents.

Zero yeah. Before delving into our budget matters, I'd like to bring a few things to your attention, starting with more information on our Department departmental workforce.

We hosted our own in house Job and resource fair on November 22nd to provide hiring managers with a chance to get to know our candidates personalities and background beyond their resumes and applications. In fact, the DLIR selected three of five eligibles recruited at the event.

We increased participation at job fairs and attended 13 events in 2024 hosted by the Workforce Development Division as well as those hosted by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and uh, West Wahoo, Hawaii Pacific University, Schidler College of business and star advertiser.

We use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn X and our recruitment page to post content about DLR culture, recruiting events, uh, departmental spotlights and job opportunities.

The DLIR uses all the system wide tools available, including the flexible hiring rate, shortage, differential hiring above the minimum, and using career ladders for certain positions whereby entry level employees may obtain a 29% pay increase within two and a half years.

Our ASO, Lena Rocky Wiggin, has developed a newsletter and our PIO posts content on our internal Internet page to bolster our mission, culture and benefits.

Lastly, the Department has two major modernizations efforts underway, UI's Hui Wakai project and the Disability Compensation Division's Electronic Case Management System, the latter of which I'll discard shortly because it's tied to budget requests. The UI Hui Wakai Project, you know, is on track.

If the project team keep doing great things, hopefully they'll work themselves out of a job in 2027. The term working together does not sufficiently describe the extreme collaboration that UI did last year with the modernization project and also launching a new Unemployment Insurance call center and a streamlined web inquiry form.

I was grateful but not surprised when they took on this task. These updates are designed to improve access to the program for Hawaii's diverse population and enhance the overall customer experience.

Also for your information, the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund had $711 million on November 30, which is the statutory date for calculation of the next calendar year's tax schedule, which will be schedule C for 2025.

Regarding our budget requests, the Department obtained approval from Governor Green for many of our budget requests for fiscal biennium 2025 to 2027, and we were spared all the vacancies we wanted to keep, largely due to most of those being federally funded positions in our Unemployment Insurance and workforce development divisions and our administrative services office that are therefore ready readily available to ramp up hiring should the Federal government provide funding in the case of a significant economic downturn or crisis like the COVID 19 emergency.

You know our big ticket item is the DCD Electronic Case Management System Support, maintenance and operations. You know we're requesting almost $3 million for each year of the biennium to Fund the maintenance and operations of our Electronic Case Management System with associated licenses and cloud services.

The budget request ensures that the State's secured infrastructure environment is properly maintained and licensed. The funding provides the means for injured workers, employers, attorneys and physicians to electronically file and access workers compensation and temporary disability cases in a secured cloud environment.

The system supports the Department's mission to increase economic security through efficient online filings and timely benefit payments. The system went live in December 2022 with project enhancements completed December 2024. To date, there's been a total investment of $16.7 million in the project.

DCD is also requesting the restoration of two Enforcement Specialist positions, one on Oahu and one in Hilo. These positions support the Administration and enforcement of the workers compensation, temporary disability insurance and prepaid health care laws. Since 2009, the investigation investigation Section has lost to Enforcement Specialist positions on Oahu and three Enforcement Specialist positions on the neighbor islands.

The total number of investigations statewide decreased from 11 to 6 or 40, or a 45% decline in investigation staffing. The staffing shortage was further exacerbated by the acquisition of the responsibility for DCD to process applications for Certification Certificates of Compliance for Hawaii Compliance Express.

Currently, the Investigation section processes 4,200 HCE requests per month, especially as many entities now use HCE for other non government purpose like confirmation of business, businesses, insurance and licensing.

Restoring these two positions will provide more meaningful Administration of DCD's laws, help DCD stay up to date on Hawaii Compliance Express certificates and increase collection efforts for overpayments and penalties. 2 HR Human Resources Specialists to implement the Holo Delegation and Act 186 we currently have 773 designated classes of work delegated by D Herd.

The Recruitment and Examination section of the HR Staff office that is currently staffed with one HR specialist four is swapped with requests for recruitment activities. The assumption of additional work by existing staff has created a tremendous backlog.

As a result, the catch up work has been severely curtailing the current HR staff from providing much needed and timely assistance to program administrators and staff. Two new HR Specialist Board positions will provide the necessary professional assistance needed to address the backlog and allow the HR staff to provide more timely assistance through programs.

2 Labor law enforcement Specialists for our Wage Standards Division in the Compliance Branch there is a continuous backlog of Chapter 104 hrs prevailing wage cases.

The two additional investigators will initially focus on minimum wage, overtime and unpaid wages cases which will allow higher level labor law enforcement specialists to exclusively investigate and catch up on the backlog of Chapter 104 prevailing wage cases.

The additional positions will also provide for more active strategic enforcement program by conducting focused industry compliance checks and for the Immigrant Services and Access Unit for Office of Community Services. This request funds two positions and expands the Immigration Resource Centers to provide more direct client assistance.

Act 207 SLH 2024 provided funding for two FTEs to OCS to create an Immigrant Services and Access Unit within its staff, one program staff and one fiscal staff. The Bill also appropriated $12,000 in operation funds and 300,000 in program funds to expand the OCS Immigration Resource Centers.

However, the funding is limited to the appropriation made by the act and non recurring. OCS believes that this budget request is essential for OCS to comply with and promote one of the key statutory mandates and goals that the Legislature prescribed for OCS when it created OCS. By law hrs chapter 371k in 1985.

OCS was created by consolidating several state agencies, including in particular the State Immigrant Services Senate, among other responsibilities. Hrs 371k31 directs OCS Executive Director to serve as the principal official in state government responsible for the coordination of programs for the needy, poor and disadvantaged persons, refugees and immigrants, and finally under Federal funding.

Without a doubt our jobs will be challenging. We are aware of the stated policy priorities of the new Federal Administration and the makeup of Congress, especially as our operations are about 60% federally funded.

You know the new President will be sworn in on Monday and we've seen in the Past that, after the swearing in, sooner or later comes the swearing act, and it's also, you know, it's all speculation until there's specific proposals or actual budget changes. So our federal programs are in touch with our federal counterparts, as always, and preparing.

And we'll keep the Legislature apprised as issues arise. You know, we have plans and options in case of potential federal funding shortfalls.

You know, we're going to work with anyone who has an idea to meet our budget needs, and we promise we won't be shy should a critical issue arise where we might need additional support from the Legislature. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

On behalf of the employees of dlir, we look forward to working with you. We will do our best to respond to any questions you may have.

Okay. You mentioned that I guess it was your priority nine. The for ocs. You mentioned that in your remarks. Is the number. The number we have on Table 6 is 440,000. Is that slightly different or is that.

That's correct.

So when your opening remark said, is that the number used? I thought it was slightly different.

I didn't. I don't think I mentioned figure on my opening remarks, but the 440,000 is correct.

Zero, okay. Okay, okay. Why don't. Why don't we quickly go over Table 16? You mentioned the first one, the almost $3 million for the management support.

Yeah, that's for.

Any questions on that. I don't. Okay, then the holo delegation program.

This is for our HR. You know, like I mentioned, there's. We have over 70 positions that are delegated to us. And, you know, we did. You know, we. We have a lot of backlog. And, you know, I think if having two. Two more HR specialists. Four will.

Yeah, because this is from last session. Yeah. HB 1832.

And is this for your Department? Department delegations. What is this paying for the whole. The two position? What are they doing?

Yeah, this is for our. For our HR office. Are you adding two HR positions? Not the whole? No, two. Two. Two HR positions for our Department.

So how many in your office now? We have seven, and you're adding two more. And how are they different than the seven you already have?

Can you. Can you speak in the mic, please? Just state your name.

This additional two position will be.

Can you state your name?

Zero, I'm sorry. My name is Kim Nguyen. I'm the HR officer for the Department. Yeah, so the HR Department, we handle classification, labor relations, and recruitment. So recruitment staff. Currently we have only one person to handle all the Recruitment activity. So the labor person have to back up and sometime I'm back up.

And then the transaction staff have to help also because we have only one specialist focus on all the recruitment activities. Yeah. So that's why. And our Department also have 73 delegated class of work that instead of D herd, the recruitment person have to do all from A to Z to generate the list. Yeah.

So to post the vacancy, to shrink the application and to certify a list to give to the program to fill. And then we have 73 delegated glass of work that only one person handle it.

So you've had this delegation for how long that the authority?

1989-19.

And so what were you doing between 1989 and now when you need two additional positions in terms of the recruitment? And I guess you're doing the whole thing. So it's classification, recruitment and hiring.

So the recruitment staff should have more than one staff. We have only one person to do all the recruitment activities.

But from 1989 to now you have only one. But now you're asking for two new positions. What were your doing between then and now?

So all other staff have to chip in. They have to help the one person to do the recruitment activities and then. Which will delay our service to the program on other areas. Yeah. So we hope that with the two additional staff then the recruitment can do more on the recruitment activities.

Maybe then they can, you know, like generate the list faster, certify the list sooner and then give it to the program sooner. Yeah.

So what do your other staff do then? The other staff in HR do in terms of recruiting and you know, hiring nobody.

So other staff, they do transaction, they do classification and compensation and they do labor relationship question.

Sure.

On this one, yes.

Immigration. Yeah.

No, we're on number two still.

Zero, sorry, I thought we were on number HR for the Department. But we're talking about 73 delegated. Last of. We have the delegations in.

Okay. Any more questions on the holo delegation? Okay, why don't you explain the next one, your priority three. I think you mentioned that in your opening remarks too.

But the special one, the backlog.

Currently now with our wage standards division, you know, we have about 76 backlog. These are Chapter 104 cases. And we, you know, there's about 65 cases that are more than 360 days. Three, three cases, you know, more than 180 days and eight cases that are less than 90.

You know, we, we, you know, we've had a continuous backlog on this chapter 104. And I think the.

The two additional investigators will, you know, they will initially focus on minimum wage over time and unpaid wage cases, you know, which will allow higher level labor law enforcement specialists to exclusively investigate and catch up on the, you know, on the 104 prevailing wage cases.

So, Director, how long have you had these. These vacancies for these. For these two particular positions?

For the weight standards?

Yes. How long? How long, Evan?

No, these are. We're requesting two more positions. New positions.

Okay. Okay, got it. Thank you. But you don't have vacancies in the division.

Yeah, we have one vacancy.

So. So wait, so are you asking for two more to the one vacant or two additional? Yeah.

So you feel those two will catch you up?

We think so. Jer.

Zero, she left. Okay. Okay. Number four.

This is for the. For our dcd, you know, we. Because we had, you know, we lost two enforcement specialist positions in, you know, since 2009. Entry enforcement specialist positions on the neighbor islands. And, you know, with the increase of the, you know, doing the certificates of compliance for Hawaiian Hawaii Compliance Express, you know, we, you know, we.

We were, you know, processing like 4200 HCE. So if we. If we restore, you know, if we have these two positions, it will help help us stay up to date with the Hawaii Compliance Express and also increase our collection for, you know, overpayment and penalties. You had a question?

Yeah, I just want to go back. Sorry. To. To. On your priority one on same disability compensation division. The 2.9 million for each year. The 26. Is that complete? I thought the project was completed. Or is that the. Is that the annual operating cost for.

The system, the operation and maintenance?

So that's going to stay at 2.9 into the future?

Yeah, it's 2.0. Let me bring in Roy and Koito.

I'm sorry, would you repeat the question again?

Yeah. So your, your 2.9 million that you're requesting, two years out, is that. That's for the. I thought you had the completion of the DCD modernization project.

Yes, we did, but we are. That 2.9 represents the maintenance and operations, the annual recurring costs together with the licenses as well.

So that will be ongoing annual cost for maintaining the system?

Yes, unless we could probably reduce it a bit if we can get more resource. Well, we'd have to check and see if we can get some group discounts, perhaps working with ETS and perhaps with the Department to see whether or not we can get some governmental type discounts, group discounts.

So we can lower the costs and maybe try and get some additional positions to train some techs so that they can take over some of the maintenance and operations requirements that are contractors.

So do you have sort of your local grown people to manage this? And does that 2.9 include, now the consultant doing it or are your own staff doing the maintenance? So you're just paying for Software? Is this 2.9 just for software or does it also include staffing from the consultant? There's no positions with this. But the consultant.

The consultant is doing all of the work.

Right. 1.7 million is for the consultant. The other rest is for the licenses.

So my question is, are they trading some of your staff to take over the 1.7 million in the long run to do the maintenance?

We. Right now we don't have any staff that we can train, so no.

No IT staff on dcb.

Well, not from Disability Compensation Division. We don't have any IT or the Department.

I'm sorry, what about the Department doesn't staff you or help you. You're just doing it straight for consultancies. The contract is to do to run your whole program, right?

We have support from our IT staff Department, ICT staff. Why don't you just say that? Because we're going in circles. Okay?

Can you just find a way that you can use the 1.7 million to train your own staff? So in the long run you're running IT and not the consultant.