 This is Senate government operations. It is Wednesday, February 24th. And today we are looking at the outcomes for the state of Vermont. We have a set of outcomes that have been established with some minor changes. I would say we maybe actually put them into effect 10 years ago. And have made some minor changes since then but they are the, the aspirational goals that we have for the state of Vermont and for our and for Vermonters. We have a couple the government accountability committee has made some changes and I'm going to let Senator column or take it over from here, because he's the chair of the government accountability committee, and he can then introduce Sue and drew to go through the changes. Thank you madam chair. And it's great to see everybody today. We had two meetings regarding this and also public hearing, and then a workshop that we had on Saturday, Senator Rahm who was a new member of the act attended, and Senator white is also on the committee. And one of the things that we had established all the way through the process was a subgroup of folks who worked on some of the indicators that we wanted to potentially change. And then also what came out of that, and what needs to be statutorily adjusted our outcome situations. And one of the things that I do that don't know GAC on its own, whenever it wants to, or by request of any standing committee can change indicators which sit under the outcomes. So indicators give us some idea of how well we are doing the outcome is that I'm in the middle of a meeting. So we need to provide us with some data. And so we could change those at any time, but in order to change the outcomes, we need to have a bill and legislative we change it. And so what came out of that subgroup was a desire to do that. And so with us today is drew wrestling from the agency of human services who is the director of performance improvement. I think I have that right. And Susan Deller, who is the chief performance officer for the state of Vermont. She is a member of GAC, although she doesn't get to vote but she is the administrative representative there. And my thanks to both of those folks for hard work on that committee level. There were also two House members involved with that representatives from stead and Emily cornheiser who really has very big shoulders and she had the biggest lift of all I think I think also I could be wrong because I wasn't part of the subgroup, but I think Kevin coach Christie was also a part of that at some point through the process. So I think those were the folks that were on the kind of subject. So, Sue and Susana. I'm sorry, Susana Davis who's our director of racial equity is also on that subgroup so we are going to hopefully take a look at the bill that Cameron has drafted. In my mind, they, I don't want to say they're minor changes because they're not for reasons that hopefully both Sue and drew will elucidate. They're not a lot of language changes, but I think they do refocus our efforts in terms of government accountability committee. So whether drew or sue want to take the lead on this. Sue's other will okay, and maybe explain what the changes are. So just to give a little history to anyone that doesn't know what the 10 outcomes were established. Oh, sorry, for the record Sue's other chief performance officer agency of administration. The 10 outcomes were originally set. The 10 outcomes were set from the 6 from the 2014 session. Since that time on outcomes. We've made a couple of wording changes here or there, but we really haven't. We haven't made any major changes. So, so this one is an important change. So with the subgroup and with the public on coming up with indicators that we could use to add into the existing outcomes report with the goal of having comparative outcomes so that you could look at, you know, an outcome for incarceration rates and I'm making this up incarceration rates for BIPOC population versus incarceration rates for the general population. And you'd want to be able to see those together so that you could see what the disparity. And, and when I say you I mean the legislature and the public. So you could see the disparity and begin to ask questions about why is there a disparity. And coming up with policies or programs directed at trying to change that disparity. So when we were working on that, and it's very interesting to realize that two of our outcomes are are based on small populations small distinct populations and shouldn't really be and I'll let drew go into all the reasons for that. So basically we want to combine the one outcome that was about elders living in in situations that they want and disabled people living in situations that they want and homes that they want and when we were looking at the disaggregating those it became very clear that we, those two outcomes should not be separate and they're a little too, they're too specific to be a population wide outcome. The committee came up with the recommendation to GAC that we were going to put a bill forward under sponsorship from the VOPs to address that so drew you want to take it and explain some of the reasons why. Hey everyone, it's nice to see you all through wrestling director of performance improvement at the agency of human services. So, as you all know, the actual 86 legislation was written according to the results based accountability framework. And actually the 2014 statute, I think, was a sort of improved from an even earlier statute in which originally Vermont established outcomes of well being. And so we drew from some of the language that we had used in the past, even if we weren't sure that it was going to stick forever. I'll also say that in 2014. When we were developing outcomes and indicators originally, there was a, there was a fair amount of participation from the nonprofit sector in addition to the state sector, but I would not say that there was a robust nor comprehensive or entirely inclusive process to establish those outcomes and indicators. So I think it's appropriate just in general to think about what we have as a foundation that we can now improve substantially in general. And this is one step in that direction. But I think we need to keep the bigger picture in mind and be thinking about what sort of inclusive process, can the government accountability committee or the legislature, essentially sponsor that will enable more voices to contribute to this conversation. But to Sue's point, the results based accountability framework is set up in such a way that we can create aspirational as you've already said, population outcomes of well being that set out desired conditions for all Vermonters and they truly are intended to be aspirational, so that we are starting from a place of common ground, before we get into some of our differing opinions about how to actually achieve those conditions. And so it's intended to help us to create collective impact. And so the basic frame for an outcome of well being would be all Vermonters are or all Vermonters have or all Vermonters experience some condition. And that's sort of the basic structure of an outcome. And we, the framework advises against incorporating a specific population into the outcome itself, because that can actually be accomplished through indicators as Sue suggested. So that using actual measurable data, so trend lines that we can see over time we can understand who in Vermont actually is achieving this outcome and who isn't, and to what extent, and how do we actually understand how what the experience would be and how do we measure what the experience would be for Vermonters who we are working towards achieving those conditions for. And so to get very specific. We have two outcomes right now seven and eight Vermonters, older Vermonters live with dignity and in settings they prefer and Vermonters with disabilities live in live with dignity and in settings they prefer. So both of those outcomes do include a target population, and they also include a fairly specific desired condition. And it had been a long standing recommendation or I guess I'll say question, maybe recommendation is too strong a word from the Department of Disabilities aging independent living and the agency of human services to think about why we wouldn't just include indicators of older Vermonters and Vermonters with disabilities throughout all the other outcomes of well being so for instance talking about Vermonters over certain ages in the Vermonters are healthy outcome, or in the Vermonters Vermont families are safe, nurturing stable and supported. So rather than sort of silo indicators by population, we want to make sure that every population is represented fully in each outcome. That would be the best practice of results based accountability and see why hope that sort of. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, we're all learning as a group. Many of us have been doing this since 2011 I think or 12, and you learn in your expertise grows as you go along. And one of the challenges that we have not just us or gap, but departments and even entire branches of state government have this. It's hard to not see yourself. So everyone wants to have their own section, you know, so we, it's very difficult to get everybody to understand that if it's a generalized Vermont is healthy section, all different departments and agencies that have anything to do with health are appearing under their by definition you don't have to have a section for the judiciary and a section for the legislature and so we ourselves sort of tripped over this one I'll say and because I think didn't work these together and we split them. Historically and now we're so splitting them wasn't the right thing to do either but we think that consolidating them and rewarding them to be broader and encompass the greater population under which we can do specific indicators about the sub level populations is the way to go. And so that is what's represented it represented can't speak this afternoon is represented in the bill that that Amron has in front of her. So, I'll let Amron you want to take it from there. And talk about the bill at all. Ron, did you have a question. Well, yeah, but you know before we walk through the bill I just, I know drew that you referenced and not a particularly robust public participation process in the past I'd love for you to talk about your analysis of the public process this time because this is a huge deal this is the mission and theory of change essentially for the state this is a way for reminders to hold themselves accountable to this. You have places like New Hampshire that have whole public participation agencies and do things like New Hampshire listens etc. I don't see any of that so far so I just, I think it's really dangerous to talk about these outcomes without discussing the public participation that has occurred. And if I take that. Thank you. So, part of the charge in Act 154 last year was that the chief performance officer, the director of racial diversity and the SEC as represented by coach Christie. And in a group with other the subgroup with other members to come up with recommendations to GAC for BIPOC indicators. And as Senator Rom said, part of it, the challenge was the bifurcated session last year. The actual bill or the act 154 didn't get out until the end of September wasn't signed until on to early October. And it left us really insufficient time to try to meet the March 1 deadline of making the recommendations. I really representative cornhizer and drew in the committee worked really hard to try to make this as a broadly participated in as possible but frankly we didn't achieve that so the recommendation letter that we're still crafting is due to back to GAC on the first and it's going to say that. We recommend that we disaggregate the existing indicators which you know certain existing indicators which we're listing and that will be incorporated into the upcoming report that the chief performance office does in September, but that over the summer GAC work, either, you know, get an outside facility Tater or something but we have to broaden the participation was really less than robust. So we're going to make recommendations. We're not comfortable none of us are comfortable with the amount of public participation we had. And so we're not comfortable using that little bit of data and input to make recommendation. So, so we as a committee feel we tried our best but we really did not achieve the goal which was to get broad participation from the communities and organization. So, so that so we're not going to make recommendations to add indicators specific to the BIPOC population, except for by disaggregating existing ones once that are already there that we know that should be disaggregated. So we're going to ask GAC to spend the summer doing a better job of this drew you want to know before drew does can I just say that they're we're dealing with two different things here. Yes, that's we're not dealing with the indicators at all today. That's not. That's actually my question I don't know what the public process was about the out changing the outcomes. I don't think there was any. We could have input I guess from people I, I do not want to start changing. I think it's falling for us to start changing all of the outcomes. We are changing them and we've had changing. Yeah, yes we're changing to we're changing one word in one and we're changing we're combining two outcomes to we're not changing those outcomes we're changing we're combining them as so I guess we could have public input into into this if we wanted to. I think the outcomes are great importance to Vermonters and those are really substantive changes and so that's what I was asking is there has been no public process on changing the outcomes. We that that's up that's our responsibility in this committee is to have that public input so if any, between before March 12, we can have public input on it we can open it up and we can have people come in and testify. What did I miss is happening on March 12 that we have such a crossover. Okay. So that's the short deadline with a it is a short deadline but I'm, and I don't send her a column or. Thank you madam chair, and I saw Drew's hand up so I want to go to her. I'll just mention a couple of things that are wrong. I know you would send an email at one point about the possibility of delaying what we did on Saturday, past March 1. The issue there would have been the optics of it. I think that gap committee didn't feel like that was a good idea to sort of put off what we were charged with doing statutorily in other words we wanted to step up to the plate. And do our best to do what we were supposed to do by the date that we were given, rather than sort of kick the can down the road and not do anything until later, and I think that's an important consideration. And I'll mention, as Senator weight mentioned, if we, and I'm perfectly willing to take testimony, but we risk not making crossover with a bill if we do that, because we have to basically get it out of this committee, and it's going to go to the other body. By that day if it's a policy question in order for it to get acted on this year. I will make this pledge. We will be we have it on the on our schedule again on Friday. If people want to come in and we're not going to talk about indicators. In two days. In two days. No, let me finish. We have it on our schedule on Friday, we also have a week when we come back to finish things up. We could spend most of Wednesday, looking at this issue. I think that. And I guess we can open it up completely and have people testify on all of the outcomes if they want to but we're going to ask them to testify on this bill, these two outcomes that are being changed. There are three to my knowledge being changed. Oh, okay I thought it was to they would combine to and we've added a word to another one. I don't know how, how that constitutes public process but I will. Well, I, I don't know how else to do public process. And I am sorry but. Okay, never mind, Drew. Let me chime in here. I, I think that there is value in changing the outcomes and indicators because they do set a common and measurable agenda for the state of Vermont. And in theory it allows the nonprofit sector, the state sector, the business sector. And that has a lot of value and I think we perhaps have not done a good enough job to date in the legislative and executive branches, spreading the word about how to use act one and six and how to get involved. I think if we had we might have seen more public participation in the public hearing and the workshop that gap did host around the indicators. And I say that just because I think that it's appropriate to be. I think to ask questions about whether or not we could with the time before March 12 invite enough people who would come and really participate meaningfully. I would actually recommend that we think about both outcomes and indicators, even though they have different processes for actually being established as changes. I would follow Sue's recommendation that the government accountability committee essentially manage or shepherd a facilitation process, maybe with an outside facilitator who can really spend time bringing stakeholders to the table whether it's zoom or in person to have discussions around outcomes and indicators together. And I think that if we rush. I'm not exactly sure what the urgency is for rushing the changes with the outcomes to be honest. And to Senator Rahm's point, we did not have a an open process to visit the outcome, it really kind of came up peripherally in our conversations about the indicators. And so while I'm happy to see movement around after 86 in this committee, I don't, I don't know that I would advocate for making a change. For making a change without public process involving more even than just testimony. So I hope that was clear, but I would actually, if there's an opportunity to recommend waiting for the summer to revisit outcomes and indicators together in a public process that's what Ahs would advocate for. So to put off everything until summer. As Sue said, I think we will, we are committing to exploring as the executive branch, how to disaggregate as many indicators as we possibly can, right in current after 86 report. And that that would be a substantial improvement from what is there now in terms of understanding racial inequities and disparities, but that we shouldn't move forward beyond that until a more robust public process in 2021 to invite stakeholders to help inform how we would improve after 86 holistically through an equity lens. So do we just would put off this bill until and just not do anything this year. That's the recommendation that I'm putting on the table, but okay, I see Sue raising her hand to Senator Polina. You're muted. I was actually going to ask the same question that Jeanette just asked, does it mean putting off this bill for now. And you said yes that's your recommendation so that was my question. If I understand that correctly, if I understand that options correctly. And I think Sue. I saw you shake your head and you're muted. Our process does not prevent us or this, not putting this bill through this session, does not prevent us from disaggregating and making recommendations to GAC to disaggregate the existing indicators under the outcomes where they're at at this time. We might not be able to, you know, do a couple of indicators because of the awkward nature of these couple of outcomes but that can wait another year we have plenty of indicators that we need to meet with departments and see how they're if they're disaggregating the data and if not how they could collect the data and so there's plenty to do on on figuring out and appropriately disaggregating the existing indicators so that won't slow down the process of the goal of being able to report disaggregated indicators for the BIPOC population. I'm now I'm completely confused, because we're taught are we talking. I think we all agree that we need to put out off the general conversation about indicators until summer that. No, I know I said indicators, we have all agreed I believe that we need to put off the conversation about indicators until summer when we can. Let me finish, let me finish. Are we also saying that we need to completely begin to relook at all of our outcomes over the summer and to reestablish to establish new outcomes that there are two separate things here. And I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing because I believe that we've all agreed that your letter will come to us about this aggregating information about in the in the indicators, and that that will the the guts of that work will be over the summer and come later at a later date and come back, but are we also talking about relooking at the 10 outcomes and rethinking what those outcomes should be that's my question. Can I make a clarification here so there's actually three issues on the table. One is one could have been done 20 years ago without any legislation which is disaggregating all of our major state indicators by race. What we what I hope we focus on this year is do we need. Do we need money and infrastructure to actually disaggregate all of that information by race and gender and other identity groups so I would hope that's that's a conversation I want to have is let's disaggregate all of our current indicators by race. Let's figure out if if government has the tools to do that, then there's a question about do we we have hundreds of indicators we have lots of indicators are do we can we narrow them so that in the future we're looking at more engine lights as we might say for the future that really tells us we're going in the right direction or not on some of these things that I think is a medium term conversation. I personally don't see talking about the outcomes as putting it off I think a robust public process coming out of a pandemic is an incredible opportunity to have Vermonters share in a public process that never happened. What are the outcomes of quality of life in Vermont, after they've had a lot of time to think about that in an ongoing emergency. So that's what I'm putting out there but I in no way want to slow down disaggregation by race and other identity markers of the data that we have in state government. Right. So where are we. I still am confused because I think that if if there are some things that will be disaggregated we know that right that's being already being suggested. Whether we disaggregate every single indicator, I think is a different discussion. And then. So what we have before us now is three changes to the outcomes. Are we saying we should not make those changes to the outcomes without more public input. And if we have public input, is it just about those changes to the outcomes, or are we opening it up to, to looking at all of the outcomes and changing those and I do have to say that there were, there weren't a lot of individuals involved in this conversation. But we have been, we have been working on these outcomes for many years and there have been many, many, many groups involved in the conversations over those years, many. It started when Diane Snelling was still in the, in the Senate, and we've been working, taking testimony for all those years so Senator Clarkson you had a comment. Yeah, I would take all of you, all those of you who serve on this committee and I know Casey is new to the committee, but I take Sue and drew and Brian and your and Casey now, your recommendations on is this a good time to open it up and review all, all of these aspects of it I mean, when was the last, I mean it's not, it's not, it's just seven years. We're just seven years into it's not like we've hit a 10 year mark to open it all up but is this an appropriate moment to open it up and and actually review some of our assumptions and and I mean I guess that's my question to you is through. Soon I have talked about about this a lot and I so I think the answer to your question, Senator Clarkson is yes I think Senator Rahm's point about coming out of a pandemic and also a national and certainly in state reckoning with racial injustice. I think it's the perfect time to say what are we committing to as a state there's also non state efforts like the Vermont Center for World Development has undertaken with the Vermont project work. And so I think it's a good time to take a step back and say how do we want to articulate our overriding vision for the state and who needs to be involved in doing that and so I think to clarify because I can see how these threads are getting confused. I think it's true that Sue on March 1 will be sending recommendations that include the executive branch committing to by the September 2022 one report, disaggregating as many indicators as we can by East race, if not also by gender and other identity characteristics. And then so that's one that's happening on March 1 will make those recommendations. I think to your point about these three outcomes on the table, and to Senator Clarkson's question. I think that summer 2021 would be a good time for the government accountability committee to open up a robust facilitation facilitated stakeholder engagement process to look at both the outcomes and the indicators and so we may decide to keep a number of indicators. That are now disaggregated that we think are really meaningful, but to Senator Ron's point we may also realize that there's a bunch of things we're measuring that are not helping us better understand the very different experience of our monitors across the state. And so we may want to make holy fresh recommendations at the end of summer 2021 to the to the Senate and the House gov ops committees about the outcomes and also what indicators we believe should fall under them. Right now I am as I listen to this conversation I think this may be the watershed moment for that that review and regrouping. Sue. Well, you know part of me, my hair is standing up, because I'm going, ah, we're going to change everything, but we always have to be open to changing these, although you know you you have to fight the urge to change everything constantly because then you will never get a consistent particular measure or outcome or results over time, which is where you can really see the trends right, you know, you know, half empty half full, you know. So, but this we've been doing this as you say since 2014 so it's probably is and I think people are comfortable now with the process and understand it much better. But I think about how departments would have reacted if two years or three years into this we changed everything. And, you know, we've had, we've had our challenges as you all well know, and getting departments to understand and accept and train and get all of this so, but I think it is a good time to relook at it and I'm sure I'm confident that we'll keep, you know, the graph, the vast number maybe even or certainly a lot of the existing indicator because a pretty broad in general and then they're in the areas that you care about the economy that you know health of the population, the environment, things like that so I don't have, you know, but but my hair is it still standing up. So, I would suggest then that we just drop this topic for now. Susan, I don't want your hair standing on ends to zeller, but I, I have run a longitudinal study since 2087. And, and I, the law, I know the integrity of over time being able to view exactly the same questions, I get that. But we are very bad on our longitudinal study we do add quite a few things. So, it's gotten longer and longer, but I also appreciate that things change and humans resist change even though it's the one thing we're guaranteed. It's exactly resisted so fully. So, I wish you good luck balancing all those truism and life realities. I will tell you you have no idea the battles that were fought about even coming up with 10 population outcomes that are really aspirational and kind of apple pie. And that's what the outcomes are as they say this is where we would like to be as a state. And there, it took, it took a long time to come up with what we thought we wanted to be as a state so if, and we can we can look at that and see what it is that we might think differently now about where we want to be as a state. And we may want to be in many of the same places but looking at different aspects of how we get there. Well, those are the indicators so and unfortunately, one of the things that we, we ran into and we're going to have to be very deliberative about this in in with a lot of input from people is the understanding the difference between an outcome and an indicator and that and there that's a huge difference and it took 10 years to get legislators to understand the difference. And so when people start thinking about indicators and wanting those to be the outcomes. Anyway, it's going to be it'll be an interesting process. And people still want to be happy and economically secure. I mean there. I mean we may have different ways of getting there but I think some of the big outcomes we want will not change. No, I agree. Okay, so, Senator. It's second day in a row we've decided to drop a bill. And, and we've also dropped retirement. The house is right and left. No, we're going to the house is going to the house is going first. We're going down the route of less government right. We're we're we're we're deferring to the house to start the process on retirement where yes. We're not dropping that topic but we're just letting them take the lead on it. We want to see 150 people get into agreement before 30. So Senator column or. Yes. Are you okay with this. I'm fine. If that's what we want to do. I'm all for it. Okay, okay. Madam chair if it means we see more of Sue and drew that's not a bad thing. No, that's not. And hopefully it'll be in person. Wouldn't that be wrong. I think the, the one thing that I would like to see come out of this session and it could be done through GAC is that we have a budget to have a real public participation process over the summer and beyond. You really can't do this well without. There has been no money to do a public process. So I don't know if there's a way for our committee. To recommend an appropriation for this process to take place, but I think that's what needs to come out of this session. If we're going to do a better job than we have in the past. Well, Sue's office has a budget. You're not looking at it. You're looking at my budget. But I would, as I said it to the GAC committee, you know, and telling tales out of school, I know Steve Klein's got money put aside. He always has money left over every year. And that's how he does all those studies they do. So, you know, just like grab some of that. So I'm happy to keep it. I didn't say that I didn't say that you did. We didn't hear anything. So I guess what we can do is try and figure out what it might take, what it might look like. Yep. And go from there. And mad. Yes. I love the fact that you mentioned that Matt done center on rural innovation and, and center on rural. I think you mentioned another center on rural. Studies or something. Development. Yeah. We now, we now have resources we never had in 2014. And really good ones. And that would be, you know, great to. And we have the engagement of huge communities that we, quite a large number of people that we also didn't have as, as engaged in 2014. So I'm going to end this conversation. I realized we are about half an hour over our time. And I didn't realize that because I was expecting a call at two o'clock. I told Senator Polina that he would have to take over at two o'clock when somebody arrives at my house for me to sign a paper. So I thought I didn't think it was too yet. So we're going to end this conversation now and we'll take it. We can take it up again on Friday and continue the discussion about where we go and how, how we do some. So I'm going to end this conversation. And I'm going to work with the GAC committee and. Get some public participation over the summer. Is that okay with everybody? Okay. Great. So I do see that. Thank you, Drew and Sue. Oh, Drew and Sue. Drew and Sue. Thank you, everyone. Yeah. It's true.