Transcript of Gerry Bonds’ (GB) interview with Mike O’Brien (MO) on OETA-TV Channel 13’s show “OKC Metro” on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, which aired on Saturday, July 25, 2009, at 5:30 PM, regarding economic stimulus funds.

GB: Thanks for joining us. The ongoing news of rising unemployment rates and cutbacks of city and state services drives home the point that our national economy is still in the doldrums. The Obama administration is almost frantically trying to pump money into programs all across the country in an effort to jump start various projects. That stimulus money is a blessing to Oklahoma’s Department of Rehabilitative Services. They’re in line to receive more than $7 million, and in a very tight budget year that money comes in the nick of time. With me to talk about how this money will be spent and who it will help is the Director of the Department of Rehabilitative Services, Mike O’Brien. Thank you so much for being here today and, you know I have to say, it’s so rare that we get to talk about available dollars to spend, what a delight.

MO: Thank you very much. Well, it’s very delightful, and in Oklahoma it’s been a particular issue for a long time. The rehabilitation program has been short-funded for several years, including long waiting lists and the inability to serve people, so to have new money injected that allows us to bring everyone for service is really exciting.

GB: Give us an idea, a true idea, of the picture of before and then, now and after, in terms of the number of clients and what you think you’re really going to be able to do.

MO: Well, in January we had more than 2,000 people on a waiting list and a year ago at this time more than 4,000 people on a waiting list, and we’ve had no new funds since 1989, essentially, for level funding. By receiving the new funds, we’ve actually been able to clear our waiting list for the first time in more than three years.

GB: That’s unheard of, isn’t it?

MO: Well, it is for us, and it really is very exciting, and in addition to that, we think that we will bring additional new clients, perhaps as many as a thousand new clients who can receive services as part of the stimulus funding.

GB: So, in total then, how many will you be able to serve, do you think?

MO: Well, right now as a state we’ve been serving about 12,000 a year. We think that with the people we’ve taken off the waiting list and the new people we could get over 14,000 people that we serve, and perhaps increase the number of people that go to work, perhaps 35 or 40% over what we’ve done in past years.

GB: And that going to work aspect is what you’re really focusing on, isn’t it?

MO: Well, that’s primarily our responsibility. We position people with disabilities to get good jobs, what we call it is entry to the job of their choice. Not just any job. We don’t want people to just end up in the food service industry or janitorial jobs, we want people to get professional jobs and become teachers or draftsmen, or whatever role they might look at. If they want to work in food service, then that’s what we want too.

GB: Right.

MO: We call it informed choice.

GB: Okay. It gives us an idea of how this money will actually make that happen and how it will help the employer, as well.

MO: Well, from our end, the first thing it did is it allowed us to clear the waiting list. By statute, we were supposed to clear the waiting list if we could. The second thing that we’ve done is we’ve devised a way to work with employers and put money directly in the hands of employers in our communities and small non-profit companies. What we can do with that is what we call “on-the-job training” money. An employer can hire somebody into a new job, which is always really expensive for an employer.

GB: And, especially expensive right now.

MO: Oh exactly, and many employers are having to lay off people anyway. What we can do now is, we can fund up to about $3,500 to pay for that first two or three months that somebody’s on the job, learning the job and when they become skilled and proficient at the job, then the employer hires them full time on their wages, instead of on the support that we’ve given them, and we’ve saved the employer money, but we’ve created an opportunity for a person with a disability, and at the same time, we’ve put money in the hand of the non-profit corporation who helped us put them to work in the first place.

GB: That’s great. Do you have enough employers, or if there are small business employers out there watching, should they contact you?

MO: Absolutely, we should be contacted. We’ve not had enough employers at this point, although it’s interesting, we’re starting to get phone calls as the message gets out. We also have the non-profit corporations that work with us for job placement are going out and talking to employers. We’ve also hired through Galt Corporation a hundred individuals that we’re paying directly to help us put people to work. So that’s another 100 people that will have an income for the next fifteen months that didn’t have an income at all, and they’re getting an income by putting others to work.

GB: You see a lot of faces and know a lot of stories, how can you humanize this for us? What it is, actually.

MO: Well, I think that the best way to see this is to think about people you’ve known that have had disabilities and whether or not in your mind you saw them as a working citizen, or not. I’ve got a colleague that works with me that ten years ago was unemployed, but he came through our program, he got a Bachelor’s degree, he became employed by us, ultimately got a Master’s degree, and now he supervises one of our units. We see people, at least 20% of our people, are placed in professional jobs, another 20% or so are placed in technical jobs, we see our people placed across the state. And, what we believe is the capacity of every citizen in this state to work and produce and to make a difference in their own lives and to make a difference as a taxpaying citizen.

GB: And that is the main focus of these dollars, but you have so many other programs, and some of them will benefit from these dollars, as well.

MO: Absolutely, we do transition with the public schools, which is working with students who have disabilities as they leave the school to either go to college, votech, or employment, and we’ve invested part of this stimulus money specifically into public transition so that we can help students to go to work when they leave school, or get in the training program. We’ve also partnered with eight of the American Indian Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation programs, working with them to do job placement in their communities where we jointly share clients, in addition to serving some of our additional clients under the stimulus funding.

GB: And very briefly, this won’t stop dead after fifteen months they way you’ve planned it?

MO: No, it won’t. We’ve actually created a new unit called our Social Security unit that will be used to generate new funds in the future. Social Security reimburses us every time we put somebody to work, and they leave the roles. The more people we can put to work off of Social Security, the more funds we can generate and we have a unit that’s been exclusively trained to make sure that Social Security clients, if they want, can go to work and get good jobs, leave the rolls and that can generate, last year it generated $1.6 million, we think it can generate $3 or $4 million every year to support this as an ongoing effort.

GB: That’s great, we started out on a positive note and ended on one and I am so happy. Please keep us posted on the results.

MO: We will, and thank you very much for having us.