And, bringing the microphone over, it was almost ready to get going.
I call this meeting the House Finance Department of Administration Subcommittee to order.
Let the record reflect it as 4.31 p.m. on Thursday, January 29th, 2026.
Present today, we have Representative Karak, Representative Story, representative Hymshoot,
Representative Holland, Rep. Vance, and Representative McCabe,
Representative St. Clair,
Representative Allard,
and myself, Chair Schraghi.
We're in full attendance here.
Thank you.
As we start, if you could please remember to mute your cell phones.
I want to thank our LIO moderator, Jude Augustine, for helping us with behind the scenes work
for our committee.
As you've seen, it can be somewhat technical, helping our Committee operate.
So thank you Jude for your work supporting us in our efforts here.
Today, we will briefly review the subcommittee process and hear from the Department of Administration
with an overview of the department's fiscal year 26 management budget and fiscal
year 27 budget requests.
On the subcommittee process, the DOA subcommittee will work with the members
and during the meeting times of the House State Affairs Committee.
We will generally meet in this room on Thursday starting at 4.15 pm unless otherwise noted.
Representative Carrick and I are working together to set up the schedule and my staff will keep
I look forward to working with each of you.
My goal is to have a collaborative, informative, and productive process that doesn't take
more time than is necessary.
So to the extent you have questions or would like to dig in more, please let us know, otherwise
we're going to try to move right along through the subcommittee process.
Before we hear from the department, I would to encourage members to become familiar with
their binders.
The subcommittee binder include data and resources from our nonpartisan legislative finance division.
If you could maybe give us a little wave for those who don't know you.
Thank you, Mr. Carpenter.
Who will be available for questions during committee meetings and throughout the process?
I highly recommend setting up a meeting with him to go over the graphs in the subcommittee
book found in your binders and discuss any questions you may have.
Lastly, my staff, Caroline Hamm, over here.
Thank You.
Now, let's begin our main presentation today from the Department of Administration.
Here with us, we have Administrative Services Director Stephanie Bingham as well as her
team who I will allow her to introduce.
Thank you for being here today.
If you could please come up to the testifier table, put yourself on the record and begin
with your presentation.
appreciate it. As you get set up, just a note for the committee, we have a stop at 5.15.
So we've got about 40 minutes to get through 23 slides. And so we will ask the department
to breeze through the overfuse as quickly as possible so that there's as much time for
questions and anything of interest to the Committee. So with that, I turn things over
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon.
Can you hear me?
OK.
OK, good afternoon, members of the House Finance Subcommittee.
I'm Stephanie Bingham.
I am the Administrative Services Director
for the Department of Administration.
Today, I provide an overview of The Governor's
fiscal year 2027 budget for our department.
Please bear with me.
I move to the department!
I have been in this position for six months,
and I AM slightly nervous.
Yeah, take as much time as you need, and we'll get through this together.
So thank you.
And he's the only one that bites, so we can control him.
Next slide.
And before you proceed, Representative Allard.
Get the volume.
She's sitting next to me like I can't hear her.
Can we get the Volume up on the mics, speakers?
I don't believe we
can, Mr. Jude, are we able to get
the Volum up just slightly on these microphones here?
Just a moment.
Thank you, thank
you all right, please.
Representative allard, let us know if that continues to be an issue.
please continue. Okay. Do I control the slide? I believe so. You should have a keyboard there and you should be able to use the arrow key to advance.
Thank you.
Thank You.
Okay, this slide explains our mission and our range of services provided to both the public and state agencies.
Our mission is to provide consistent and efficient support services to state
agencies so they can better serve Laskins.
Services to the Public include legal and public advocacy services, Alaska Public
Services to state agencies include Office of Administrative Hearings, Administrative Services, Finance, Personnel, Office
of Information Technology, Risk Management, Retirement Benefits, and Procurement and Property Management.
Next slide.
Historical budget comparison.
This slide represents budget trends from FY21 through FY2027.
The Department of Administration's FY27 proposed budget totals 350 million.
Up from 340 million in FY26.
Our unrestricted general funds, 99.8 million, is up from 96.6 million
in a FY 26.
Designated general fund, 36.5 million up
from 35.4 million and FY 2016.
Other funds?
2.3 million up from 207.6 million and FY26.
Other funds is largely in our agency receipts in the Office of Information Technology Information Services Fund.
Federal funds, 1. 3 million.
Only slightly up, from FY 26 by 23.1000.
I'll pause for questions.
Please continue.
Thank you.
Slide four represents our FY 27 budget by fund source.
This is just another perspective of slide three.
If there's any questions, I'll take any, if not, we'll move on.
Please continue, Director.
Slide five represents are funds and how they're allocated across our results delivery units.
These are appropriations in our budget bill.
The department is primarily funded by the other fund group, as mentioned,
largely interagency receipts and the Office of Information Technology Services.
With central administrative services at 104.8 million,
the office of information technology at 68.2 million and risk management at 35.20 million.
As for the unrestricted general funds across the department, the largest share is legal in advocacy services with 85.7 million and central admin services, with the smallest share at 11.6 million.
Shared services is eliminated in the FY27 proposed budget.
I'll pause for questions.
Director, you're doing great, please continue.
Thank you very much.
Slide six is our apply 26 governor's request our major
Sorry
These are major items that were not funded
These were apply twenty six items
For our office of public advocacy. There are three positions requests for administrative services officer
Appair legal and an attorney five
Office of Information Technology how to Microsoft 365 co-pilot AI tool and AI projects
And division motor vehicle had programming capacity with an analyst program or five added.
These requests were not re-requested in FY27 as the department is prioritizing.
The most critical needs as this state faces statewide budget constraints.
Questions?
No, thank you for covering those just for the committee's background.
We wanted to make sure that we reviewed some of the requests from last year that were
some historical context with this year's budget and so please continue director thank you
slide seven fy 26 and action enacted management plan by line item
for personal services accounted for our largest share at over 70 million for legal
and advocacy services in general funds services first
are significant for centralized administrative services at 55.5 million information technology
at 37.2 million and risk management at 34. 2 million. Commodities in capital outlay remain
minimal across the department. Travel also remains minimal, across
the Department with the largest share for the legal and advocacy services, at just over a million
The centralized administrative support services is increasing approximately 2 million in personal
services from the FY26 enacted to FY 26 management plan driven by the Division of Finances
Reduced Vacancy Factor from 22.7 and FY 2016 to the 11.34 in the management plant.
Any questions?
Thanks for taking it easy on me.
Slide 8 represents our accomplishments,
which we are greatly proud of.
Maintained retirement benefits, operations
during our system outage, automated payroll timesheet
approvals, eliminating manual reviews of 7,500 timesheets
per pay period, completed statewide salary study,
and implemented the competency.
competency based recruitment, migrated disaster recovery and oracle systems to the cloud reducing
recovery time from days to minutes, stabilized indigent defense services and reduced attorney
vacancies. Any questions? Please continue director. For slide nine, these are our department wide
The IT classification study is being implemented in our FY27 budget with $2 million.
A salary and Alaska care rate adjustments are $7.7 million and shared services transferring
57 positions back to agencies for accounts payable, travel, and expense activities.
to the division of finance or 24 permanent full-time positions
in six non-perm position and the deletion
of the Division Director position due
to re-organization questions.
Yes, I have a question.
We have seen departments utilizing federal receipts.
I would say at a higher level as we look for other.
revenue sources to fund positions and otherwise, what is your perspective on how
realizable those receipts actually are? I think that's one of the challenges we've
seen in some departments is they received the receipt authority for federal funds
but then they're not actually able to realize those federal
funds or collect them.
Do you have any input that you could provide or perspective you
could put on that within your division?
Well, we are largely in our agency receipts funded, so we
don't get those funds directly.
Other agencies pay us with those ones,
so I wouldn't want to speak to another department's budget and
whether they can pay those.
But the federal receipts perspective on
that?
I mean, I think every agency is different and depends on when
they're regrouping those federal funds.
That would be for another department to be able to realize those funds.
We might ask for some follow-up on your collective or aggregate federal receipt authority and your ability to collect on it in the previous year.
Okay.
That can be a take-home question. Representative Story.
Thank you, Chair Schruggi, and welcome to the committee. Great to have you here.
Thank You.
And just thinking about the last few slides and I really appreciate the accomplishments
being here and some of these things we really talked about last time about
the importance of getting those payroll time sheets approvals, eliminating the manual review.
That's great, but then when we looked at page six
with the governor's request and them not going forward,
are we going to have any problems keeping up
with like the first one maintaining retirement
and benefit operations on that timeline?
And thank you very much through the chairs.
How sorry about that through this chair.
As far as I know, none of those Office of Information Technology services that were requested
were going to impact the retirement and benefits.
Follow-up representative Story?
Yeah, thank you.
Through the chair, so of all these bulletin things here, you feel the work timeline, the
progress that we've made.
They were implemented in, and we're going go forward and be able to maintain those.
accomplishments. Yes, thank you. Thank you and another question under the shared services, the 57
positions. Can you tell me how many of those are filled through the chair? I actually don't have
that information off the top of my head, but I would be happy to get back to you with that
information. Perfectly fine. I understand that you are newer to your position and so to the
Please rely heavily on that.
I'd rather have a later answer than trying to scramble on the fly.
So no representative Vance.
Thank you through the chair and I'm going to skip ahead to the next slide.
Since we're on roll with questions that way we can keep moving.
But it's also with the division of finance with
the payroll positions that are being transferred that's 40 payroll
positions putting them back under the departments.
I know the original intent of bringing everyone under the Department of Administration was
to streamline and have similar payroll across the board.
Do you know if these departments are using a similar system that was originally adopted
under DOA or have they gone reverted back to their original unique system they had before?
representative Vance, so the system will not change.
Currently we are still using Iris, which is the integrated
resource information system.
That's not currently changing.
The departments that are receiving them back are the most
complex bargaining units and they will address their own
individual needs.
We will retain the simpler departments and provide that
service within the Division of Finance.
or with me if you would like her to come up
and answer any more questions for you.
I think the high level answer is good for now later,
maybe when we get into the finer details,
but thank you, that was helpful.
Thank you
And Representative Holland.
Thank You through the chair
and thank for being here with the presentation.
I'm gonna have to go back and ask a really basic question
that somehow got by me at this point.
I am seeing here and the budget changes slides here
fairly high significant number of reduction in full-time positions it looks like as we transfer
some of these positions back to other departments and yet the overall department budget seems like
it's gone up a little bit and I guess I'm missing something really simple in terms of if we're moving
a bunch of positions out to the other department I would assume that there would be a fairly substantial
budget here as that was shifted over to other departments are going to pick it up.
So if we were looking at multiple departments, we'd see it kind of level back out again.
But I'm not clear on how to make the math work here with the number of positions here that
look like could be close to 100 that are, I think, leaving this department to go to
other places would seem like it would generate a fairly substantial change in the total
Budget for the department what did I miss something director Bingham is that related to the fact that previously you're receiving receipt interagency receipts for
the functions of those positions
Now that you transferring those physicians back out you'll no longer receive those receipts
So your revenues and expenses both commensurately move
together. Is that accurate and do you want to add anything to that? Through the chair. Yes,
that is very accurate. I appreciate you taking that one for me. You represented that beautifully.
Yes. Some of those positions are moving back into the division of finance. Others are
moving into departments. The departments already have the authority to pay for those
positions which really in essence just will move in personal from services to personal services
Okay. Thank you for now. I'll dig into that. Thanks. If you have additional questions, please let me know. Any other additional
questions right now before. Oh, representative Holland. Yeah, thank you on a completely different
Tacked the 26 proposal had the artificial intelligence
Projects and the co-pilot license
Chair and I know at the time we had discussed this and there was some hesitancy about funding the larger project of just
Throwing a bunch of co-pilot license out there, but there's a lot of interest in the projects particularly is it relates also to the
Concurrent resolution 3 that was interested in examining how can we use AI in order to help streamline and create process efficiencies in
The Department of Administration and i was really impressed with some of the project that were going on before
and wanted to see that work continue,
because I think as we see in the rest
of business process management
that this is the way of the future.
And I'm just curious with not bringing this AI request
forward into this new year,
is there a different strategy that's being implemented
within the department for exploring, developing,
and implementing process improvements
through artificial intelligence tools
How that's going to be developed if I don't necessarily want to lose this and set it aside from 2000 or from from last year bring it forward
Maybe it's handled differently now
Thank you through the chair
Yes, representative Holland. I actually have Bill Smith on the line and he could possibly give you a little bit more detail on his thoughts on
the AI tools for IT
If our Chief Information Officer Smith is available,
if you could please attempt to address that question.
And if could hold off for just a moment,
Officer smith, we have in a very hard time hearing you.
Can you try again now?
We may have adjusted the volume.
Absolutely.
Through the chip.
Through the chair, thank you for the record. My name is Bill Smith. I'm the State Chief
Information Officer and Division Director of Office of Information Technology within DOA.
And through the through-the-chair, Representative Holland, you're corrected. Obviously,
these, this request last year was not included in the budget and the request was specifically to
approximately 2,000 Microsoft 365 co-pilot licenses.
When that was not included,
we did move forward with a small-scale pilot
that is funded internally for about 200 users
to learn the benefits and try to document
some of the benefit of that Microsoft
365 Co-Pilot tool.
to date we have about 800 licenses that are in use
across the state agencies have just kind of taken it
out of time and purchased where they thought they would be
valuable so we are we're actively pursuing that
and we take advantage of it but not to the scale
that was originally anticipated by that previous project.
Thank you very much Mr. Smith appreciate you being
available to address that question.
Are you going to have Mr. Smith back to talk in further detail about OIT specifically at another time?
We certainly can, but if you'd like to ask a question now, it's more than appropriate.
This is something that I can have a follow-up on to the committee.
I'd to know in the pilot project and maybe looking at.
the IT and specifically the co-pilot with Office 360 if they found that there's data that shows the
the workforce efficiencies that can maybe justify making it cost neutral cost savings
you know how how is the work force accepting this technology does it help with morale you
you know how this is integrating into the workforce I think would help us as
decision-makers to see if it's worth investing in and then the secondary
question is now that it has been on the market for a little bit has the price gone down?
That was Mr. Smith. Is that something that you could follow up with the committee on maybe your own if there's some
Internal assessment or analysis it's been done that
You'd be able to share with us any data that be beable to sure we would appreciate that is that's something you'd
Be able follow-up with this on
To the chair, I absolutely put a record again, Bill Smith, State Chief of Information Officer.
We have a limited amount of data.
Our pilot was only about two months long, but we combine that with a larger longitudinal study that was done in another state to kind of extrapolate our learnings.
And still, we do have that. We can get that back to the committee.
Very good. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. All right. With that, Director, please continue.
Thank You.
Would you like me to go through slide 10, we didn't officially go
through it?
Yes, would you please?
OK, thank you.
This is a continuation of slide 9 for division changes
in position transfers.
Division of Finance, payroll positions
are moving back to agencies.
That's 40 full-time positions.
Positions transferred from DOF to Agencies.
Department of Corrections will receive 8.
Department of Fish and Game will receive six.
Department the law will will
receive one. Department
of Military Veteran Affairs will
receive, one Department
of Natural Resources will
receive four.
Department
of Public Safety will
receive three in Department
of Transportation and Public
Facilities will
receive 17. Office of
Information Technology Services,
deletion of a long-term vacant
position.
Public Defender Agency is adding a holistic defense social worker funded by the Alaska Mental Health Trust.
Any questions?
I don't see any. Please continue, Director.
Slide 9 through 19 are division-specific overviews for the Division of Administrative Services.
Our mission is to provide budget and financial guidance in training to the department.
Transferring authority to commissioner's office, IT classification study, and salary adjustments.
With slight increase totaling 121,000.
Any questions?
I don't see any.
Slide 12 is the division of finance.
Their mission, is provide accounting payroll and travel services for the state government.
changes, transferring of payroll positions, those are the 40 positions going back to agencies,
addition of positions from the shared services, which is 24 permanent full-time positions
and salary adjustments. The total increase is 11.5 million,
which largely due to the de-consolidation in the transfer of funding authority.
Maybe one that's being formulated, but I think you can continue for the moment. Thank you chair for
The moment, I I'm gonna do some digging on this one
You know the the comment I'll make and maybe we can follow up on it is that with a fairly significant shift in
Resources of the departments. I am still a little mystified that we're not seeing some efficiencies that are bringing down some of
the total
budget for this department just because there's few few people to manage and less activity going on the department it seems like even though I
Understand the netting out of the services on there. There's still a piece here. That's not quite connecting in my head
So I'll do some more digging, but thank you for recognizing that I had a
Question in the head if I couldn't get it out very clearly. Absolutely director, please continue. Thank you
We're slide 12 for the division of
personnel, their mission is to provide policy, consultive guidance, and direct human resource
services to the state of Alaska Executive Branch. Their changes are for salary in Alaska
care rate adjustments only. The total is 598,000. Questions?
Division of Retirement and Benefits.
Their mission is to administer the state of Alaska
Political Subdivision Retirement
and benefits plans.
Their changes are for the IT classification study
and the salary adjustments.
Totally increases is 900 into 1,000.
Any questions?
Representative Story.
Hi, yes.
Thank you.
Last year when we heard from the division, they were talking about problems they'd had
and the way the cycle runs when people retire a lot of the end of June and they
were getting backlogged and wondering.
how that has been going, I do know that my office has had a couple of calls about retirement
benefits, their benefits not getting to them as timely after they've retired and we refer
them on and they have been trying to be responsive to those.
Thank you through the chair representative Storia.
I actually have the retirement and benefits director Kathy Lee here with me if she would
like to come up and put herself on the record.
Welcome to the dais director Lee.
Thank You.
For the records my name is Kathy the excuse me and I'm the director of the division of
We did a reorganization last year in order to support our processing units in
order, to be able to process retirement benefits on time. And last
year we went from 14 to 16 weeks before we could process back to our normal four
to six weeks within about three months after that reorganisation.
At this time, we are short some staff, and we do have a hiring freeze in place, so it's
taking us a while to get permission to fill those positions.
with some retirements particularly those that we need additional information from either the
participant or from the employer in order to process. But we are still largely meeting our
four to six week processing time with about 80% of our retirement process during that period.
I know when we talked about the vacancy rate at the beginning, I believe that was mentioned
and how it is we've had our vacancy rates go down. We have some retirements where people left and
we haven't been able to, you know, i know there's a hiring freeze, but how did we lose some staff?
predominantly we have lost a couple for medical reasons either themselves or
their family but generally we haven't had a lot of vacancies and so over this
last year so we've been doing pretty well at keeping ourselves at our baseline
if we lose any more that might change but right now we're doing
Yes, so how does one get permission to get an employee when there's the budget is?
When there's a hiring freeze, thank you for those words because what you do, and I thank
you so much for getting that caught up.
I know we talked a lot about that last year, how we were behind, but we don't want to get
into that situation again when people retire and they have questions about insurance and
things like that.
It's just so important.
And it's stressful if they don t get those answers.
So how do you go about petitioning to have your hiring frees lifted, so to speak, for
Through the chair, Representative Storey, there is a waiver process that we follow and so we complete this waiver.
We give information about the position, what it does,
what its criticality is to the division and that goes up to
the commissioner's office for approval and then over to
the governor's Office for Approval.
Quick follow.
Quick. Do you have a waver process in?
Through the chair representative story, we have several waivers in for vacancies that we
have.
Thank you.
You, uh, Director Lee, you talked about approximately 80% of your retirements are processed within
the forward to six week, I think, a target period for the 20% that are falling outside
of that range.
How long is the average delay in processing and approval of benefits?
Chair Schraghi, that depends on the member or the members employer because the 20% that
falls out of the normal four to six week processing largely is because we're lacking documentation
such as divorce documents, qualified domestic relations orders, birth certificates, things
like that, and we can't process without those.
And then there's a small number where there are indications in the member service and salary record that there is a discrepancy that
there may be some unreported leave without pay that would affect their total service. So we need that from the employer.
There are a very small numbers of those that we just haven't been able to process because of short staff.
Representative Holland. Great thank you through the chair maybe to the
chair initially where I think right now talking about the division of
retirement and benefits and the question I have is regarding the group health
life fund. Is that within this division or am I asking the
question at the wrong to wrong division right
now? I'm getting a head shake from
our legislative finance division that I think this falls outside of our purview here, but
we can work with you representing Paul to figure out where to direct those questions.
Okay, thank you.
Absolutely.
Any additional questions for Director Lee while we have her in the hot seat?
Director Lea, I guess my last question is with,
I know that across departments that things are lean, we'll say.
Is it your perspective that you're meeting all of your statutory obligations and requirements currently?
I'm mr. Chair. Yes. We are meeting our statutory and federal requirements
Thank you
With that, I think you are
Running away. Yeah, sir. You're free to run
Thank You
Fabulous and we've got another 10 minutes to go here. So your trial is nearing an end
Director Bingham, you're doing great, please continue.
Thank you very much.
Okay, slide 15.
Division of Shared Services is being eliminated.
The positions are being transferred.
We've discussed this previously.
If there are additional questions, I can take them
or we can move on to the next slide.
I don't believe there's questions here.
Please continue, thank you.
Office of Information Technology,
their mission is to provide a robust, secure information
with enterprise services that support state agencies
and business needs.
The changes are the deleted trend of a vacant position,
IT classes to study, and their salary adjustments.
The total increase is approximately 2.7 million.
Questions?
I guess, yes, I do have one question.
It's been a consistent theme over the years
that software costs continue to go up ever increasing.
I don't see any increments related to that.
Is that being eaten by the division and born elsewhere?
Can you speak to how those costs are being absorbed?
I actually am going to defer that through the chair
to Bill Smith.
Thank you very much.
That's why we have our lifelines.
Yes.
CIO Smith, you care to address that question, please.
Yes, absolutely. Through the chair, again, that's a Bill Smith for the record state
chief information officer and division director of ops review creation technology. You're
exactly correct. We're taking it out of time.
We are seeing about anywhere from a 10 to 20 percent increase on service renewals due
to inflationary pressures as well as some increased costs based on increased consumption
But right now, and then for the last couple of years, we have been really relentlessly
trying to find any efficiencies we can inside our own organization and trying
to adjust our budget and deal with it with the...
with the funds that we have.
We are though starting to look at,
and then we haven't been looking at terminating services
where we need to, as well as looking
at the possibility of pushing some services
out of the enterprise catalog and back
to departments to fund directly,
if we're not able to support them
within our enterprise budget.
Okay.
Representative Vance, I think maybe a follow-up to that.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is in regards to the capacity of data storage.
I know that that's a few years ago when we transferred to
the cloud and we talked about capacity and and
we're seeing an increase. Everything is is online. And what what's our status of that?
the cost to the department and are you expecting any major shifts as you
bring on new programs and technology? Mr. Smith?
For the chair representative Vance, yes we we do see increased cloud storage
utilization as as we have more modern systems as were using more cloud-based
and we're getting a little bit better visibility because of our our significant
in terms of what systems are using, how much storage.
We're also seeing increased storage requirements
based upon achieving best practices in areas like security.
We are security logging,
which is something that's absolutely critical
to our ability to react to security incidents
has been growing as we've been kind of bringing that along
to modern standards.
So we are seeing an increased volume of storage,
I wish I could tell you that I'd see it leveling off or declining.
I really don't.
Our approach has been to really quick pressure on the manner in which we're storing that
data to try to reduce cost as much as possible per unit of storage and also try and become
more effective on it and then really drill down on what we should be storing and what
we shouldn't be store.
One of the areas that we are focusing on internally with our enterprise systems is retention.
You know, we want to make sure that we're not retaining things beyond what we need to just
because we are afraid to get rid of them.
So we've been working with law on retention policy to
make that sure we clearly define what it needs to be retained for how long.
And then we can start to free up some storage in that manner.
But those are efficiency elements that were taking on at the enterprise level, but also
all the agencies are facing the same situation.
I don't necessarily see the storage requirements going down,
All right, Mr. Smith, I think those are the questions we had for you, Director Bingham,
if you could please continue.
Thank you.
Okay, through the chair, we're going to move on to slide 17, my apologies, for the risk
management division.
Their mission is to mitigate the risks of the state's risk of financial loss, cost of
risk from the accidental loss and injury policy.
changes to their budget or salary adjustments and the reserve account language for appropriations.
That total increase is approximately 41k, or 41,000, my apologies, any questions?
Please continue.
First slide 18, we have the legal and advocacy services.
This is for the Office of Public Advocacy and Public Defender Agency.
Is to provide legal advocacy and guardian services to vulnerable Alaskans provide constitutionally mandated legal representation to indigent clients appointed by the court.
Their changes are the salary adjustments and the addition of one, Alaska Mental Health Trust funded social worker position within the public defender agency.
The total increase is 2.9 million.
Any questions?
Representative Holland.
Great, thank you.
Through the chair.
In looking at the performance metrics for the department,
I noted that the target for contacting clients is three days within their court appointment
in terms of legal advocacy and regulatory services.
I believe right now the OND report is that it's only about 25% out of the 100% target.
Family support target is a predisposition reports being filed with the courts by the due date,
but that's only hitting about 65%. I'm curious what this division's activities are related to,
Would you like to use a lifeline on this, possibly Director Stinson?
Thank you very much through the chair.
I think Director Simpson might be on the line.
If not, we can follow up and get just a response just in the time constraint that we have.
Do you see Director Stillston listed here, but sometimes it's not always accurate.
Director stillston, are you online?
Yes, Chair Shraghi, I'm here and I think that was a question from representative Holland was it if he could repeat that that would be helpful
Yes director Stinson it was representative holland. Can you please repeat the question great? Thank you through the chair
Director, i'm referring to the the published key performance indicators
From omb two of the indicators one is a target of a hundred percent of clients are contacted within three days of their court appointment
The second target is pre-dishibition
pre-disposition reports are filed within the courts by a due date.
Both targets, it looks like we're not meeting those targets and I'm curious what
progress is being made and perhaps how this budget supports closing the gap on that.
So through the chair representative Holland, that's a bit of a complicated question
What we're doing on our end is really client centered and it's dependent on a number of
factors that are happening in a court or leading up to the court assignment and so for example
there can be delays in client contact for a variety of reasons.
It might be that a client doesn't have a phone number.
We might have had a Client on warrant status for year and we do try to establish some
some kind of a target to hit, but I think the difficulty is that there's not necessarily
a measurable outcome for any given case that you could say should always be hit in every
case because of those factors.
So these are things that we keep in mind that sort of we aspire to, for example, if
there are legitimate reasons why somebody doesn't have client contact with the three
days, you know, obviously we wouldn't be disciplining an attorney for that because there is a legitimate
So I would be happy to try to dig into those and consult with you perhaps when it comes time for my
Hearing if you have deeper questions on that because that can be it can
Be a long and very rich discussion of what those factors are
Sure follow. Yeah, thank you. Thank you I look forward to that discussion. I was just observed that this
These metrics indicate that it's been this way for 10 years.
So it would suggest to me at this point in time that if that target isn't working after 10
years, then maybe we need to redefine the target or change the
target, or maybe look at a process issue around being able to define a target that we can
hit.
Because I think this represents a fundamental question of, you know, our clients and families,
are they getting the support that, we think that they need, and this seems to suggest
Look at how we support that. Thank you. Well, we'll look forward to some additional follow-up when we have director Stinson back before us
We have one division slide left before we get into vacancy rates
I'd maybe ask you to just quickly cover the division of motor vehicles
And if you want to make a statement on vacancy rate before. We conclude that be true. There's one missing
One missing I'm sorry. Hey, POC is not in these slides
So I'd like to see the APOC slide whenever.
We can follow up to make sure that that need is addressed.
All right, Director, please, if you could wrap up the presentation,
we're going to adjourn here very soon.
Thank you very much through the chair.
Division of Motor Vehicle Services, their mission
is to manage vehicle registrations and driver's licensing
that their changes are IT class study and salary adjustments
totally increased as 694,000.
Any questions?
No questions. Do you want to quickly address vacancy rates?
If you would like, sir, vacancy rate has varied over time,
peaking in some divisions such as finance and IT, our vacancy
rate.
I'm going to quickly jump to the next slide.
Overall vacancy rate for FY26 was about 11.9.
Risk management and Alaska Public Office Commission
show the highest percentages.
I do apologize.
We do not have a slide for APOC.
We will get that corrected and get
that submitted to you.
Thank you for the catch representative McCabe.
Yes, we will make sure that we get
that before the committee.
Representative Ballard, briefly.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you get me a layout of how many vacancies you actually have you said percentage, but I
Don't think I agree with you. Okay, thank you
To the chair
Position counts. Yes. Yeah, okay. Thank you no problem. We'll get back to you
That's okay, and I know subcommittees are much more free-flowing. But if we can try to control the
Cross dialogue, I appreciate it. All right director Bingham. Is this your first committee hearing?
Yes, sir. Very good. Well, congratulations. Thank you.
Yes. I appreciate your service to the state and stepping up into this role.
I'm sure it's a stretch for you, but you'll get adjusted. Sure. Fine.
I am sure thank you to committee members for staying a few moments after.
With that, we are adjourned at 5 17 p.m.