 Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It's Friday, January 28th at 1055. We've just completed our work on the floor this morning. So we are now going to turn our attention to State Auditor Hoffer. He's here to discuss the report that he had done on the WIOA program at the Department of Labor. So, Mr. Auditor, thank you for coming in this morning. We appreciate your time and are anxious to hear what you have to tell us. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the invitation and always a pleasure. I won't take much of your time. I'm here to just basically introduce Fran, who I don't think you folks know. She's only been with us a bit more than a year. She came from Boston, where she worked for the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. She's an experienced analyst, and I'm really happy to have her in the office. This is her fourth report in just a little over a year. So I'm loving the productivity, Fran. Thank you. She dug into this. I don't think she had any background on it, but she got good cooperation from Sarah and Sarah's crew. And I think our findings are interesting. It's a bit of a challenge, because like so many other federal programs, it's siloed in some ways, and Sarah and her team have to spend a great deal of time responding to very specific requests from the feds. But our takeaway, one of the big ones, was maybe there's an opportunity to turn that a little bit and ask for some waivers. So I'll just turn it over to Fran and let her run through a pretty straightforward PowerPoint presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. It's nice to meet you. As Doug said, I'm a little bit on the new side here, so I don't think I've had the opportunity to meet all of you, but I'm looking forward to speaking with you today. As Doug said, we worked on this project over last summer and put a report out this fall on the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, also known as WIOA. So just give me a second. I'm going to pull up some slides, and then we can get started. Ooh. Camille, I'm getting a host-disabled participant screen sharing. You're close now. Am I good now? Okay, there we go. All right. Are you guys seeing that? Great. Mr. Chair, would you like to have questions as I'm presenting, or would you prefer to save those until the end? I think it's probably easier if we take questions as we go along. Okay. Please freshen everyone's mind of what they're looking at. That works great for me. Just feel free to interrupt me as I'm going. I can't see everybody as I'm presenting, so just shout out if you've got a question. Great. So today we're talking about WIOA, and as you all know, there are a number of workforce development programs across Vermont that span various agencies that are all focused on building, attracting, and maintaining Vermont's workforce. But WIOA is the primary federal workforce development program and a major source, actually the largest source of funding for workforce development. So we can think of WIOA as the bread and butter of a lot of workforce development activities in our state. And as such, it's critical that we maximize these federal dollars and make sure that they are serving the people of Vermont. Today, I'm going to be, oops, sorry, I'm getting a notification. Today I'm going to be talking about the Title I and Title III programs, which are administered by the Department of Labor. And together these programs receive about $7 million of funding each year. So the Title I program serves three groups, it's eligible adults, dislocated workers, and youth. And there are a number of eligibility criteria for these programs. And the Vermont Department of Labor has set some priority groups, but in general, the adult and youth program are serving low income individuals and people that have a lot of barriers to employment. The dislocated worker program is serving people who have been laid off or are about to be laid off. And then the Title III program is called Wagner-Piser. And this provides services for all job seekers, so anybody with eligibility to work in the United States. And on the right hand side in green here, I've shown some examples of the types of services that are offered by these programs. But the real takeaway here is that the Title I programs are more intensive, so they offer training opportunities or a longer term engagement with the career counselors through the Vermont Department of Labor. Whereas the Wagner-Piser services in Title III are usually lighter touch. And somebody might come into a career resource center and get some support on writing their resume or searching for a job, and that might be the extent of their engagement. So there's multiple types of programs serving different populations all within the Department of Labor, WIOA programs. So given the importance of WIOA and fact that it's sort of the foundation of a lot of workforce development activities in Vermont, we wanted to take a look at how this program is performing. And we thought about this in four ways, starting with looking at program reach. So wanting to know how many people are served by this program relative to the level of need that is in Vermont. And at a high level, what we found is that these programs are serving a relatively small percentage of the population that is eligible and could benefit from these programs. So what you're seeing here for each program, we've put the number of people that were served in program year 18. And then on the right hand side is a proxy for what we estimate the potential pool of people who may benefit from this program could be. So I'm going to run through one example here, but I'm happy to speak with any about any of the examples if you have questions. In the dislocated worker program, there were 95 people that were served in program year 18. And during that same time period, the Department of Labor received notice of 15 mass layoffs that affected 880 workers. So the total number of people that were laid off is probably higher than that because the notices that the department receives are from larger mass layoffs, so from larger companies, presumably. But this is telling us as an example here that there are a lot more people that could benefit and would be eligible for these programs than are being served. I see a question from Representative Kimball. I think you're still muted. Okay, okay, now can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you. When we're with this part of the report, I was curious about the activities that the department is engaged in. Are they actively courting those dislocated workers, for instance, and just those dislocated workers are not taking them up on their services? Did you have discussions with the department about what they are doing in their activities? Does that match up with what's possible? And just we have a low take rate by the people in there? And how do we compare to other states in this particular area? Those are all great questions. And I think it varies a little bit by program, what's going on. So the dislocated worker program, for example, when the state receives a notice about a mass layoff, they do engage in some services called rapid response. So there is some interaction with the employer at that time, often helping people to get onto UI benefits, or directing them to the website to see what kind of jobs postings there are. But what's missing seems to be the translation of getting those people who are alerted about these services to actively enroll. One of the things that we're talking about or we'll talk about at the end of our presentation, and one of our recommendations are some strategies for how to make this program a little bit more proactive in terms of outreach. So rather than having people come to the department to seek out these services, thinking about ways that the department might be a little bit more engaged with either groups that are already working in these communities to find and partner with folks that would be eligible and interested in these programs. So I think that there's variation program by program. And the types of people that are served are very different. People in the dislocated worker programs are already engaged in the workforce. And so we have a connection point with them. For example, people in the youth program or in the adult program may not be as easily to contact. They might be harder to reach, which maybe means they need these services even more. And so the strategies for outreach and how we think about connecting, I think are different by program. And in our conversations with Sarah and her team, I think they were open to some of these different strategies. The question about how this compares with other states that I found to be challenging as part of our research. I mean, coming up with this, these proxies in our own state was difficult because there's not a list and several of these have multiple priority groups and multiple populations that they might be able to reach. So I'm not really able to speak to how this compares to the reach of other programs in other states because I haven't seen that type of analysis done in other states. Thank you for that. And if I just quick follow it, because we have such a low unemployment rate and have had such a low unemployment rate, is a dislocated worker, can they easily pick up a different job without going through the Department of Labor's program for dislocated workers? So I just raised that as like, is that some kind of explanation for it? That could be an explanation. And that was something, you know, when we think about the potential pool of people that could be participating in these programs, of course, not everybody that is eligible necessarily is interested or wants to participate in these programs. So for that program, that might be one answer. When we're thinking about that program in particular, one of the other recommendations that we made is that the department could look at the outcomes for all these other folks that we know have been laid off and see, okay, well, how are they doing? You know, let's look for all 880 people that we know were laid off. Are they employed six months after they were laid off or not? And if the answer is yes, then that's great. I mean, that's good for everybody. But if the answer is no, they're not, then that, you know, signals that we might need to do more outreach there. And I think on that topic, just since you brought up unemployment, you know, another thing that we've talked about a lot is that there are many people that aren't considered unemployed in our state, but still, you know, would benefit from coming back into the workforce or maybe they're discouraged from joining the workforce because they haven't had success. And so we thought about that for the Wagner Pizer and some of these other programs, maybe the adult program as well. Fran, can I make just a brief comment in response to Charlie's question? Charlie, it's also possible, it seems to me likely, that some percentage of those who are affected by mass layoffs may well be more mature workers who just take it as an opportunity to just walk away and say, I've had it. I don't want to start over. I don't want a new skill set. And if, in fact, their skills may be quite sophisticated, but if there's not a similar employer nearby that might just say enough already, how many that might be, I have no idea. Representative Jerome, did you also have a question? I do have a question, Fran. Thank you. I just wanted to get a clarification on where Vogue Rehab falls within these Title I or Title III programs. So actually, I think Vogue Rehab is the Title IV program. So we didn't focus on that as part of this analysis. It does receive some WIOA funding though as well. Okay, because we had heard the other day that they serve about 6,000 Vermonters a year. So I was curious if that fell into that Title III. Okay, thank you. No problem. Any other questions before we move on? Hearing none, I will move forward. So the next thing that we wanted to look at is whether participants are actually connected with a quality job, meaning that they're employed and that it is a good job. One of the goals of the WIOA program is to connect people with, quote, high quality jobs and careers. And if I was going to sum up the next couple of slides into one sentence, I think I would say that based on the information that is available, it can be hard to answer this question, but from what we can tell, for too many people, the answer is often no. So what we first looked at is the data that is put out by the Vermont Department of Labor in their annual performance and quarterly performance reporting. So if you've looked at any WIOA performance data in the past, this is probably the type of information that you've seen. And a lot of this reporting is mandated and required by the federal government. So the U.S. Department of Labor requires that programs collect data on employment status and quarterly earnings, two and four quarters after people have exited from the program. And looking at this data, you might conclude that Vermont is doing a decent job. In the light green, we see the targets, which are set by the U.S. Department of Labor. And in the dark green, we see the actual performance of these programs. But I want to caution a couple of caveats when we look at this data. So this employment and earnings data is informed by wage records, which does tell us something about some important information. Don't get me wrong. What people are earning is a really important outcome. But it doesn't tell us that much about the quality of jobs that people have. So we don't know whether these are part-time or full-time, whether people are having to work multiple jobs in order to meet their needs, whether these are jobs that are on a career progression for people, which would vary based on the type of program and participant as well. And in some cases, we found that the way that the data was used, or I guess sort of labeled, might be misleading. And I'll just give an example here. In the sample that we looked at, there was an adult who had made $58 in the previous quarter. And they were categorized as employed because they had some earnings in the previous quarter. But I think we can agree that $58 in a quarter probably doesn't constitute meaningful employment for that person. And we also had some issues, or the Department of Labor has had issues of missing data or not being able to access data that can skew what we see here and maybe make it look worse than what's actually happening. So there's some caveats when we look at this data. The final caveat that I want to just spend a minute talking about is the use of targets here. So as I mentioned, these targets are set by the U.S. Department of Labor for Vermont. And this is an area that the Vermont Department of Labor, I know, is also experiencing some frustration and challenges with as well. But I want to zoom in on an example to highlight a couple of issues. So this graph here is showing the adult median quarterly earnings targets and actuals. So the targets each year are in the light green, and the actual performance each year is in the dark green. And what we're seeing is that there is the targets are significantly lower than the actual performance each year. And that the gap between the target and actual has grown year over year, which suggests that these targets might be underestimating participants' earning potential. And this is important because targets impact how we understand whether a program has been successful and they anchor our understanding of performance. So instead of comparing performance to this target, we compared the performance to the Vermont livable wage. And when we look at it this way, even though they've met the performance targets, we see that only in the dislocated worker program are participants earning a livable wage as defined by the Joint Fiscal Office. And it's not super surprising that the dislocated worker group is the group that's earning a livable wage because these are often skilled workers who were let go. And so, you know, they may have had an easier time re-entering the labor market. But it does point to the fact that, you know, not everybody that's exiting this program may be finding employment that is meeting their needs. One quick comment, friend. In fairness to the program administrators and as Sarah pointed out, and as I'm sure the members of the committee know, the ability of those who participate in this program to go out and get a livable wage job is severely restricted by the fact that there's a relatively modest percentage of jobs in Vermont that pay a livable wage. So that's a big deal and doesn't necessarily imply under performance by the program, just something to keep in mind. Thanks, Doug. Representative Kimball. Fran, I'm just wondering the livable wage, I mean, for a single person is I think $13.40 some odd cents an hour, right? So that doesn't equate to $35,000. This, let's see, so this is based on the, I believe it's the 2018 livable wage, which we used here because the data that we were looking at was from participants who had exited in 2018. And this is the annual figure that is averaged between the rural and urban livable wage. I don't think that's accurate, Fran, now that I look at it. Oh, we can, we can talk about that later. Call Charlie, I'll get back to you. Okay, I think it's about 28 under that. To be fair, there are JFL publishes, I think, two or three different single person wages, but none of them are quite this high. Right. Okay, thanks. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we'll check in on that. That might be my mistake on this. All right. So the other way that we cut the data here is by looking at the distribution of quarterly earnings, because sometimes this can get lost when we just look at median earnings. So the median earning figure first doesn't include people that have no earnings. So we wanted to put that in here because I think it's important perspective to remember that there's a sizable portion of people that are exiting these programs and do not have a job or no earnings two quarters after exit. And looking here, we can see that, for example, in the adult program, 27% of people do not have earnings and 23% of people have quarterly earnings of less than $5,000 a year, which is annualized to less than $20,000 a year. So we included these types of analyses in our report to just try and provide a more complete picture of how people are faring as they exit these programs. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on this slide, but I do encourage you to take a look at it either here or in our report. What this slide is showing is how people's outcomes are comparing their pre-program status to after they exit the program, both in terms of whether they gained employment, whether they had higher or lower earnings across each of these programs. All right, unless there's any questions, I'm going to move on to the third section of our analysis. So the third thing that we looked at was whether there were some elements of the program that were more effective than others. And in particular, we focused on training because training is an area of focus for the Vermont Department of Labor with the thinking being, providing people with the skills that they would actually use in the workplace is a good way to connect them to a job. And the data that we saw seemed to agree with that. We found that people who participated in training activities had higher earnings and in some cases were more likely to be employed. People who choose to engage in a training program are likely fundamentally different than people who don't opt to engage in training programs. So we can't say anything about causality here, but the data is pointing us in a positive direction when it comes to participation in training. We did want to point out a couple of flags that we saw when we were looking at this data. One is that roughly 20% of participants that participated in training did not complete their training program. And about half of the people that did a training program and then were employed were not in a job that was related to their training program. And there are multiple reasons why this might happen. Somebody might leave a training program because they found a job, which would be a really positive outcome. But if that's not the case and people are participating but not completing the program or they're doing something totally unrelated to where they ultimately find employment, it may be a sign that we're not getting a great return on investment for those training dollars. So that would be an area for future exploration and something we can talk about at the end as well. Oops, sorry wrong direction. The last thing that we looked at is how Vermont is comparing to other states. So we compared Vermont's performance on a number of metrics to all 50 states and the District of Columbia. And you can sort of just skim through these. Happy to talk about any of them, but you'll see that there's a lot of bottom 10, bottom 30, bottom 50% when we're looking at this list. And that's despite the fact that in the Title I programs, Vermont is spending more per participant than comparable states. So we're seeing, you know, sort of middle or lower half of the pack, but we're actually spending more in that Title I program. For the Title III program, the Wagner-Pizer program, our spending is more comparable to other states that are similar to Vermont. So as I wrap up my presentation today, I just want to spend the last couple of minutes talking about the future of the program and some areas for consideration. And from what I understand, your committee reviews a range of workforce activities, including a lot of new programs and new state-funded programs that require a lot of attention to stand up and rightfully so as you get those off the ground. But part of our goal in conducting this analysis was to bring some fresh eyes and renewed focus to this existing program that is really the foundation of a lot of workforce development activities in the state. And we've shared these findings and worked closely with Sarah and her team and have really appreciated her openness and candor as we've conducted these analyses. So the first bullet here, and we touched on this earlier, is thinking about how to make these programs a little bit more proactive and outreach to the communities that could benefit from these programs rather than a more passive approach of having people approach the department. And as I mentioned, opportunities for partnerships with DCF or community action agencies. And this is the type of strategy that you could put in a future workforce development bill, working with Sarah to ensure that people who benefit can get access to the services that they need. The next two bullets are talking about data collection and participant feedback. And I know that there's always more information that we could collect, and it takes time and resources to do that. And so we're aware of that as well. But these are programs that are serving a large number of very different groups of people, you know, they're serving youth, they're serving people with disabilities, they're serving highly skilled workers who have been affected by global trade issues. And so understanding what's working for them, or I think equally important why people aren't choosing to participate in these programs or why they might be, for example, dropping out of a training program, which is important to shaping the future success of these programs. And the last bullet point here, which Doug mentioned at the beginning relates to federal waivers. And, you know, we recognize that this type of program must operate within the constraints of a federal fund, a federal funding and that there are rules associated with that program. But the Department of Labor, US Department of Labor does allow states to request waivers. For example, almost half of the states have requested a waiver that gives them more flexibility for how the youth program funds can be spent and the percentage allocation for in and out of school youth. And Vermont has not pursued a waiver at this time, but having spoken with some youth-oriented organizations, we know that the rigidity and constraints of this funding makes it difficult to access and enroll young people in this program. You know, it might be that the Department of Labor is not ready at this time to make adjustments to their program, but we don't see a reason that they couldn't apply for this waiver to give them added flexibility should they choose to make those changes down the road and be, you know, well positioned to do so versus having to wait, potentially wait, you know, some processing time if they submit that waiver at a later date. So that is the conclusion of my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions and I know that Doug, I'm not sure if you have any closing comments that you'd like to make, but we're also available to discuss the report after this presentation. Let's see if there's any questions first, Charlie. Sorry. So when, Fran, you were talking about other youth programs. So are you talking about something like the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps and being eligible for wheel of funding if we apply for a waiver? Yeah, so the waiver question, it's not a free for all once you get the waiver, but right now there are pretty strict rules about whether the or how the youth funds have to be spent and a significant portion of them have to be spent on out of school youth. So we've seen a lot of other states requesting waivers to change the allocation of what of how funding can be spent, maybe to include people that are in, you know, in school youth. And so that's exactly the kind of program that we're thinking about. Well, maybe if we had more flexibility for how those funds could be spent, we could connect these dollars to those communities. And if in school youth, meaning still of school age, but if they've, if they're over 18 or they've graduated from high school, I guess that's maybe, yeah. I believe that the youth program criteria, I have to double check it's either 21 or 24, but it's not 18. Okay, thank you. Just for the group and for Fran, I did send a note to Charlie, I checked and JFO as I mentioned calculates a couple of different single person, liberal wages. The one that Fran used and is not inappropriate, it's just a choice is for a single person living alone. And therefore, he or she is paying the full boat on a one bedroom apartment where the so-called official livable wage is predicated on the assumption that it is a couple. In fact, a married couple, which I disagree with as a predicate, but that's just the way it's done. So in this case, it is in fact, 35,000, but it's just one of several. Sorry about the confusion. Thanks, dad. And as for the rest, I don't have much to say except that I know that you guys have been hearing about, talking about, thinking about the labor market. And I was struck by something the governor said in either his initial state of the state or the budget address. And he noted, and I've seen this elsewhere since, that since early last year or 2020, I should say the labor force has declined by 24,000. Well, that is true. On the other hand, it has grown by over 5,000 in the last six months. So I think it's clear. I shouldn't say it's clear, but I suspect that there are a fair number of people who left the workforce for obvious reasons. Some of them work in frontline jobs where they're concerned about COVID and exposing themselves. They might have kids, they might be older. Some of them can't make childcare arrangements for a lot of reasons that you know about. And furthermore, there are some who are just unable to find sufficient work and have dropped out. They're either discouraged workers, marginally attached and so forth. How many there are, I don't know, but I know that the latest figure is about 11%, which is a dramatically different number than the unemployment rate. So there's a lot of bodies out there. And I thought I heard Matt Barrow was talking about this recently and he didn't know how many would have come back. Nobody does. But I'd be surprised if that number doesn't keep growing for a time. And if I were in your shoes, I would be careful about, you know, supporting programs that are meant to be quick fixes. Not only do quick fixes almost never work, but investing in fundamentals just makes more sense to me. So, Representative Drell, did you have a question? Yes, thank you. I'm interested in the waiver. And if because these wouldn't be Department of Education money, could those funds for training go directly to a high school and then high school student who is enrolled in a high school education program, not a career technical education program offsite, be able to take advantage of the sort of training on site in a school building? That's a good question. I know that Sarah, when we chatted with her about this, you know, one of her concerns was making sure that it wasn't overlapping or duplicating any of the Agency of Education's programs. The criteria for the youth program, there are in addition to whether they're in school or out of school, there are other criteria and a lot of it has to do around income eligibility. So, I don't know that, you know, I think it would be program specific and sort of school specific as well. I know that the Department of Labor, I think, has some flexible funding or some flexibility to sometimes enroll students that don't meet that income eligibility, but there are other criteria that do limit how those dollars can be spent. So, I think I don't have the details on exactly, you know, what might be eligible, but there are definitely other considerations. And I know that's part of the reason that Sarah and her team haven't pursued a waiver to this at this time. But we still think that, you know, getting this waiver is the first step that would add some flexibility that can be partnered with other funding sources or, you know, thinking about how it can exist within the funding structures that are currently in place. Right. I think it has great possibility just being able, this might be a little bit of a work around to get some of that training to the students who aren't involved in this in a career technical education center. The other question I had was in working with the Department of Labor, was any of this a surprise to them? What was their reaction to your report and what were their takeaways? Yeah, I mean, Sarah and her team were really open to working with us and shared, you know, a lot of their time with us, which we're really grateful for. I think they're interested in thinking creatively about the program. You know, I think they are faced with several realities, one of which is that many of the people that they are serving, not all, but many of the people face a lot of barriers to employment. So, you know, thinking about earnings as an example, if there aren't good jobs that are available or if people really have a lot of barriers to employment, what is a good target? You know, what is fair to expect? And where could be a good starting point? So I think there was sometimes some questions about, is this, are our analyses fair in terms of comparing it to the remote level wage? Well, maybe just getting somebody, you know, into their first job is success. And we should think about it as a pathway rather than, you know, a single marker of success. So we appreciated that feedback from them. I think that they are open to considering the recommendations that we've put out here. I think particularly around some of the data work, there is some frustration on the Vermont Department of Labor in terms of how targets are set, in terms of, you know, they are required to collect certain metrics that may or may not be the best representative representation of the work that they feel like they're putting forward or the progress that they're making. But, you know, the targets are important because that's how federal funding is determined. And if we don't meet those targets, then there's potential funding implications moving forward. So they're constrained in that way, you know, they have to operate within that framework. So I think there was definitely openness and energy to think about how to improve these programs. But I think also they are really thinking about how does this butt up against both the real world constraints that the participants are facing and some of the federal constraints for this type of program. And one last question, Fran. What were some of your ideas for proactive outreach strategies? The main one that we had talked about is thinking about ways like, you know, thinking about a program like a weatherization program where we know that there is already connection with low income families and, you know, potential to connect with people that are not currently engaged in any type of system and saying, well, how might we be able to reach out to those folks and engage them in a program like this where they may not take the initiative to walk into their local community career resource center and start signing up for resume help or something like that. You know, what is a way that we might be able to reach people where they are at? And I particularly like this idea about, you know, if you have an in road with one person in a family, maybe there's a way to connect with that whole group or household, you know, who there might be multiple people in that household that would benefit from these types of programs. Thank you. Can I make a quick comment about the department's interest in and willingness to consider waivers and different approaches? I think as you all know, that particular department, I don't want to exaggerate, but it's kind of been in crisis mode for a couple of years for a variety of reasons, not all of them of their own making. But if that's the case, and I think it is, then the leadership of that department, let alone the fifth floor, that's another matter, might feel like, hey, we've got enough to do just treading water and thinking about entirely new approaches to workforce development isn't something they can manage at the moment. I'm projecting a bit, but it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Having said that, this is a lot of money that we think could probably be better spent. So I hope Sarah will make an effort to push those folks. That's not an easy thing, I don't think though. I agree with you Doug too, that we're talking about federal dollars that could be used, especially if we apply for waivers that freeze up general fund dollars that we could then apply to other things that are sorely needed. So when we talk about the department, it's really small departments within the department. So they have the workforce, they've got workers, they've got unemployment. So I'm wondering, within this department that looks at workforce, are they understaffed? Is there an issue there with understaffing? I don't know, it knows the questions that we need to ask, but I think it's a really good point that you just made. It was beyond the scope of our work, Fran had her hands full, but it would also be interesting to reach out and see if there are other states that have really been creative, not just getting a waiver that's a plain vanilla waiver, but something interesting that might be useful for us. Yeah. Thank you. And I just want to point out that vanilla waivers sounds like vanilla wafer, which is really kind of funny. Anyway, so, but Doug, just the question about how many other waivers does the state apply for for federal funding? How difficult is it? I mean, is this a huge lift? And I don't really have any idea. I know with Medicaid that we always have a waiver. So the question is, how difficult is it on this level? That's interesting. You mentioned that because I had been talking to people in my office now for some time about poverty and the fact that there are many, many programs over now over 50 years that have provided important services to people in Vermont and all over this country, but the numbers don't change. The number and percentage of people in poverty is pretty much the same. So it occurred to me, could we do something like the Medicaid waiver? And I was reminded that the poverty related program monies come from half a dozen different sources. So already you're behind the eight ball and it's not at all like CMS and Medicaid. Here, you would only be dealing with one federal department. And as Fran pointed out, many states already have waivers. So it's not like the feds have never done this. The question would be, you know, do we have an idea for a waiver that makes sense that is out of the box and might confuse them? I don't know enough about it. Thank you. Yep. Doug, do you think that this audit that you just did is looked at by USDOL? We didn't send it to them. We could. I don't know whether Sarah has. It's interesting. I don't know the extent to which they are looking outside the box. I mean, because they require Sarah and her colleagues in other states to report the same information year after year raises questions in my mind about whether they're actually looking for new, different and more effective ways to do this work. I don't know. I don't want to diss them without knowing. But, you know, you get on a path and sometimes it's hard for folks to change direction. I just don't know. The time that the country's facing right now, the challenges that the whole country's facing with workforce and how we deal with all of the issues that we're dealing with in Vermont are we're not alone. And so you'd think that the department would be looking at maybe other creative ways to get people involved in the workforce and get them trained and make sure that the money that we're spending is actually producing results. I couldn't agree more. On the other hand, the governor proposed $6 million for the new worker grant program. So priorities are different. Yeah. Well, that's not done yet. Yeah, we do. We have Sarah coming in to speak with us next week. We are talking with Matt this afternoon. So I think it'll be an interesting conversation to go over this with both Matt and with on the data pieces and then see what the issues are, the constraints that Matt has in trying to get further data. And then talk with Sarah to see how what we can do with looking at federal waivers and that type of thing. That's a shame. I have to assume that the federal money that's around these days is probably not allowed to be used by Matt for his work. It's not really an investment. If you give Matt the tools to collect more data for a year or two, then we would have to find the money to continue that going forward. That might be a challenge for him. Maybe if we can get that federal waiver, we might have some free up some money that we could apply to that. It's possible. They would know. Sarah would know better, I think. Well, I think, Fran, correct me if I'm wrong. When you asked about this, she's aware of the waiver process and that other states have succeeded in getting them in some cases. I don't think she was terribly knowledgeable about it, having never pursued it on behalf of the state, never been asked to pursue it. So I think she's on a learning curve herself, I expect. Yeah. I think you're correct that they have not pursued one. So I think understanding, she may know, but I think it would be new to understand the work that goes behind it. I encourage you to speak with her about it. I mean, they have their own thoughts about whether a waiver would be helpful for their program. So she's certainly knowledgeable about that part of it. Yeah. Well, we could always touch base with someone at USDOL to see if they'd be willing to come in and just speak to us about how that waiver works and what's how difficult is it for a state to apply for it? Charlie? Yeah, I just have had the feeling over the past four or five years when meeting with the Department of Labor that because the constraints are fairly tight on the money and how you use it, I was really trying to figure out how to stay within the guideposts rather than, as you might have said, thinking outside the box with a clear vision of how to use that money in a different way that doesn't comply. So it's more like, how can we maximize the use of that money within that certain lane rather than trying to get out of the lane? So I know that Sarah has been focused on that in terms of uses of Wagner Pizer and all the other funds. Frank, sorry, Charlie, Frank, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I heard you say relating conversation with Sarah that some of the waivers other states have obtained involved somehow changing the criteria for eligibility. And as you pointed out, and as we know, some of these programs require the state to work with some very challenged populations, which is a righteous thing to do. But that's a choice and maybe that could be changed. Doug, I think there are some strict rules from the federal government about eligibility criteria that you cannot get a waiver for, that they don't allow waivers for, but I think maybe what you're reflecting and something that we discussed with Sarah, you know, the Vermont Department of Labor has identified numerous sort of priority populations or groups that they as a department are focused on. And one thing that we discussed with her is, you know, on the one hand, it's tempting to add like, here's another group that might benefit from this and another group that might benefit from this and another group that might benefit from this. And so what is the process to actually reflect back and say, who is succeeding in these programs? And who would be appropriate for a different type of program? And how do we think about what the priorities are? You know, they've got a list of like 10 groups that they prioritize for some of the Title I programs in particular. So I think that might be an area and I don't know that it's necessarily related to the waiver, but thinking about how to prioritize the programs and who who is being served. And you know, having sometimes difficult conversations about what, who's most appropriate for these types of programs and where we should be, we're best getting the return on that type of spending. Great. Thank you. Other questions for Doug or Fran? Great. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. It was, we appreciate you, number one, doing the audit. It's always good to know what's happening. And I think that, you know, I'm glad to hear that Sarah was very open and open to suggestions and we'll continue that conversation with her and seeing what changes that we could make to make the program even stronger and trying to help people that are either underemployed and underskilled to be, to be skilled up and to get some of our children better skilled so that they have better paying jobs. People earning more money are always good for the state. So. Well, indeed. One quick thought before we go. You know, as Tom Covet will always say, being an economist, you know, Econ 101, it's easy if you need more people in the labor force, if you pay them, they will come or stay. And that is undoubtedly true. And there's an example of it right now. We heard the other day related to another audit that the designated agencies are in the state house, if not literally seeking greater assistance than their normal budget because they're having serious staffing problems themselves. It's not that their revenue is not there because it comes from you guys, but that in order to keep providing the same amount of services, they need more bodies on their end. And, you know, they are asking, I think, in part for more money to pay those people more because that makes sense. So if it makes sense for the state to get those critical services for the people who need them for the DAs, then why don't we talk more about that about the private sector instead of coming up with sometimes crazy programs? I know you're absolutely right. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it. Thank you. Nice to see you. To committee, I think we're done till one o'clock. So we have