By Chuk Hamilton, Director, State Services for the Blind.

(Editor’s Note: This presentation about State Services for the Blind (SSB) was made at the semi-annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota on May 20, 2006. SSB is a division of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).)

Good morning everybody, I am pleased to be here. It seems not so long ago we were in St. Cloud, hosted by the Central Minnesota Chapter and my old and good friend Andy Virden. Today is different and a little bit special in that it is the 35th anniversary of the chapter. So I am especially pleased to be here, and having been a resident I am even more pleased. Some people don't know that I began my career at State Services for the Blind here in St. Cloud. I covered Central Minnesota, from the Cities to the South Dakota border, and then up to Fergus Falls a long time ago, and it is good to be back.

I am leaving a handout here today, both in Braille and in ink-print. It is our 2005 SSB annual report. We did something different this year. Over the last 5 or 6 years the report was basically a photocopied document put on the web site that had lots of good numbers. You need numbers as a part of accountability, to show what you do, but it was frankly rather boring. This year we identified customers who wanted to say something. There are some people from Central Minnesota who had something to say about services. They were interviewed, and it was put together with assistance from the Department of Employment and Economic Development. That document has actually won a national award this year. (Note: You can receive a copy of this document from SSB.)

There are a number of things I want to alert you to, to let you know what we have been doing. I hope that you agree with the direction we're going. One of the things that I do have to address is a software project within SSB called Workforce 1. It has been pointed out at some previous NFB conventions that we were using a software system internally that was inaccessible for blind staff. That has been going on for some time, and it was an embarrassment.

The good news is that over the last two years there was a product being developed within the department, with our help. Not only would it bring all the software in the department, including State Services for the Blind, to a better platform with better software, but it was also going to be accessible. I am pleased to announce that on April 1 of this year the product did go into production, and I am even more pleased to indicate that it is accessible. Our blind staff are using it on an equal basis with their sighted peers, and that's the way it should be.

There are still some things, as with any new comprehensive software—bugs and reports and such—and we will get through all that. The key in any major project is how many complaints you get about it, and how many people are after you. I have to tell you, not one person has come to me and made a complaint, so that's a good thing. Certainly it was an embarrassment, we were right to be criticized, but we've completed the project and it's now accessible, so I'm very proud of that.

In the fall of 2004, when we were downtown for the convention, one of the subjects was NFB-NEWSLINE® and how to fund it. Some of you who were here will probably remember that a guest of yours was Representative Jim Knoblach, who wanted to know more about what this thing was. You all, as well as SSB talked with him, and last year the legislature passed a bill that found a permanent funding source for both NFB-NEWSLINE® as well as the local Dial-In News. It came up for re-funding this year—not at the legislature, but with the Public Utilities Commission. Our budget for that project was again approved by the Public Utilities Commission. There will be stable funding for the next year. It is a little early, but we need to remember that there is a sunset on that in 2010. Joyce and Judy were told during the hearings by some other consumers from different disability groups that they were concerned that a raid on this particular fund, which was first and foremost meant for deaf people, would be problematic. That is not the case; in fact, this year we learned at the Public Utilities Commission hearing that they are reducing the surcharge that the Public Utilities Commission can put on telephones across the state to fund programs primarily for the deaf. There is also a proposal, which I will learn more about today as to whether it's funded, in which the Commission on Deaf and Hard of Hearing is trying to get $150,000 out of that fund for their basic administrative funding. While we were told before that there was some problem related to using that for NFB-NEWSLINE® and Dial-In news, it seems there is sufficient funding and interest.

With the budget this year for NFB-NEWSLINE® and Dial-In News, and in cooperation with our Communication Center committee of the Rehabilitation Council for the Blind, the plan is to add an additional newspaper on NFB-NEWSLINE®, as well as to try something a little bit different with Dial-in News. In places where there are smaller numbers of people, where it wouldn't be warranted or even economically feasible to put the papers on NFB-NEWSLINE®, we do have the Dial-In News communications network onto which we could upload a local newspaper, say from Brainerd, for example, and use the TAM (Telecommunications Access Minnesota) fund to pay for the toll-free charges. I want to try one of those as a model to see if it will work in smaller communities to get access to local newspapers farther away from the population centers.

One of the things the National Federation of the Blind has talked about with us in the past related to NFB-NEWSLINE® and Dial-In News also has been a mentoring project. It is no secret that while people are signing up for these services, the usage tends to be not what we all think it could be and should be, so the subject of a mentoring project has come up. It has not moved as fast as I would like, but it is starting to move. Some of the mentors are in this room, and a large number of them are members of the National Federation of the Blind: Tim Aune, Joyce Scanlan, Jennifer Dunnam, Judy Sanders, RoseAnn Faber, Janice Bailey, and Craig Anderson. There have been other ad hoc efforts as well. I would like to see some more organization put to it internally within SSB, so that we make sure that when people sign up they know immediately what is available to them, and hopefully they will take advantage of it. That is something that needs to develop a little more.

Some of you know a lot about the Senior Outreach Project, but there are people in the room today that I don't know, and I want to make sure everyone is on an equal basis of information here. The senior outreach is a project that we fund with private dollars—gift funds—to get the word out about the Communication Center as well as the Senior Services area. It is a combination, and that's what sold the grants to some community foundations. It combines several perspectives, trying to get services out to individuals. The project started in February of 2005, and it has been going a year. I had it extended because we got more money until the end of September. We received one more grant recently. I have some concerns about how much further we're going to be going past September—frankly, it's an outstanding project. We have had more outreach for State Services for the Blind in the last year and a half than we have had in the last five years all together. We have a thousand letters out to optometrists and ophthalmologists. I have a spreadsheet made up by Ed Lecher, who is in charge of the project, that shows where we went, what we did, who was there, who was responsible, what was the message, what was the outcome, etc. There are seven printed pages of activities in the last year and a half all across the state. It is a good thing, and I would like to find a way to continue it. I will come back to that thought at the end of my comments.

We are currently working on our funding with the Department of Education for Braille—some tape but mostly Braille—for the grade school through high school population. It is something that State Services for the Blind did before it was funded, and because we were going to have to cut it back in 1991 or so, the Department of Education finally concocted a formula with special education money to provide support. That has changed over the years, and we are at the end of the current agreement and hope to continue it. There are roughly about seventy children right now receiving our Braille services. It doesn't mean they are not getting Braille from elsewhere in certain districts, but the Braille that they are getting there is more for short-term, not for textbooks.

We have heard about the Twenty-First Century Project every year, and frankly, it is one of those topics that I hope soon we will be announcing that it's all done. The big picture is that the audio digitization is the part that has languished and has been a bit of an embarrassment. There are a lot of reasons why it has taken so long, and that's fine and dandy, but it has to be done. I just extended that contract until December. We are seeing some productive results; there was a demo on Friday, and there will be more demos. Hopefully that will be done this fall. That is more of an internal piece in terms of how we do things and prepare the material for delivery to our customers, but it's an important part for the future, because everything is digital.

The other part of the Twenty-First Century Project that is languishing for reasons beyond our control is related to new digital radios for the Radio Talking Book. When this idea was conceived in the late 1990's and was pushed ahead by Minnesota Public Radio, it was envisioned by everybody in the radio business that the radio industry itself would have advanced into digital radio by now. Now in TV we talk about digital cable, high definition and such, and it is becoming somewhat more common, but in radio that is not the case. David Andrews was able to go to San Diego several weeks ago at the International Association of Audio Information Services, which is all the radio reading services and other audio electronic services across the country and in Canada. He was able to hear and observe HD radio. It is digital and is an improvement; they tested it and it sounded great auditorily, but there are still problems in delivering that signal to radios. One of the things with digital radio will be that you either get the signal or you don't. With analog radio, like the ones we have today, when we are a short distance from the tower, by and large if we're in the right direction we get a strong clear signal; as we move away from the center of the tower, the signal gets less clear, scratchier, and there is cross-talk with other radio stations, etc., but you can still hear it. With the digital, you either get something good or nothing at all. It is likely that someday when these radios are available, we will experience that and there will probably be some complaints. Today, there is no digital radio that we can purchase within the price point that we have—not even at twice or three times the price point we have. The money is there—there is $1.3 million sitting in the St. Paul Foundation that was raised a number of years ago for this purpose. We are hoping that the radio industry continues to develop, and at some point will be where we can actually go to the digital radio, or a hybrid. We haven't sat still; our engineers have put out RFP's to get people to develop radios specifically for our market. There were two bidders; one dropped out, and the second one’s test modules haven't worked out. We need the broader industry to get moving on that.

Talking about the marketing activities for our communication center, for our senior services area, we are seeing an increase. We know that seniors are out there; we know and you know that the statistics say that the majority of the people with a vision loss of any kind are seniors. That is why we wanted the outreach project, and we are starting to reach those people. The Senior Services unit indicates that we have a record year this year in terms of the number of people referred for services and with whom we have had contact. We look forward to seeing their numbers. Along those lines, I would like to mention a collaborative effort between State Services for the Blind, the National Federation of the Blind Riverbend Chapter in New Ulm, and spearheaded by Shannon and Charlene Childrey, related to their project down in New Ulm. I had the pleasure of being invited down there yesterday to an event with the Public library, as well as the local Lions Club. The model is one where the local library is housing equipment, and circulating equipment using their bar-coding equipment, for aids and devices for people to try. We provided the equipment, and the library is providing the circulation and storage, as well as marketing. Shannon and Charlene as well as others will be providing the local volunteer effort, having office hours, getting people down there to try things. The Lions club is funding things in part; if Shannon has his way, they will be funding more in the future. We are pleased to be involved with that; I look forward to six or eight months from now seeing what impact it has on the community and the extension of services across the state, if it is a model we should be pushing elsewhere.

We are happy to be a part of the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader. Joyce made an offer to me earlier this year (after she had her reader, of course) that there would be one available if we were interested to be part of the beta test. I told her yes right away. Dave Andrews was scheduled to get one in June, and he got impatient, saying he knew people in high places, and made a phone call, and his was delivered. He was able to demonstrate it to the Communication Center committee of the Council this past Thursday night. We intend not only to test it, but also to get out and demonstrate it. I intend to have it demonstrated at the next Rehabilitation Council for the Blind meeting. I especially want people to see this because of its size and what it does. Instead of the large copy-size reader of years and years ago that was near fifty grand, this one will be about three thousand, and can be carried around in a pocket. We are pleased to participate.

We are involved in things related to the DeafBlind community. We have spent a lot of effort and some money recently, and will do more in the future, related to persons who are deaf and blind. That also means people who have any level of vision loss and any level of hearing loss. We had a training session a few weeks ago which was part of a five-year grant we were able to write and receive from the Rehabilitation Services Administration related to DeafBlindness. The message is that people aren't just deaf or blind or both, but there's a lot of variation in between, and that the community has some different names and identification that they prefer. This was an opportunity to train our vocational rehabilitation staff in DeafBlindness as part of what our DeafBlind committee of the council is interested in having, and frankly, it's the right thing to do.

Part of the reason we got this grant was because of a manager I was able to steal away from the general agency about a year ago. You may have met her—her name is Cathy Carlson. We had an opening, and I was able to cherry-pick, and take the best. She has been to adjustment-to-blindness training at BLIND (Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions) Inc. and in Duluth, plus other training. I think those who have come in contact with her also see her as a welcome addition to State Services for the Blind.

We also sponsored a DeafBlind expo. There were a couple of people in this room who went to that. I was unable to attend because I had a legislative hearing—fancy that! But there were about 40 people who attended, and it was held on April 29th from 1:00 to 4:00 at the new Department of Human Services building in St. Paul. It was an effort that took a lot of people to put together, from State Services for the Blind, DeafBlind Services of Minnesota, the Department of Human Services, and other community members. I'm told it was a success, and that the people attending were quite pleased. I know that your own Hazel Youngman was there. We were pleased to be part of those activities. That will go on for about five years—it is not different training each time, because there will be some repetition as we take on new staff.

I want to give you feedback related to adjustment-to-blindness training. I gave this draft report at the last Rehabilitation Council for the Blind meeting back in April. Without getting too technical, each state agency in partnership with its State Council needs to do what is called goals and priorities. While we have lots of things to do, we are asked to identify some specific directions to make greater impact for customers. One of those that the Council said about two years ago was the adjustment-to-blindness informed choice issue for consumers. The issue was are consumers being provided sufficient information on which to make their own choice about where they're going. Through activities of consumer groups, the Council, the agency, etc., we developed a policy of what we were going to do and how to track it. Personally, I would like people to visit every rehabilitation center before they make a decision. I know that that's Pollyanna, and there are lots of reasons why an individual may or may not want to do that, but I think that needs to be the goal. We spend a lot of public dollars on this, and it is an important decision. People need to have all the information available to them. In speaking with Joyce before this was developed a couple of years ago, she told me "Chuk, I just want the playing field level." That was the underpinning behind this. The report that I gave at the Council was a draft, and it still is because Joe Pattison has not edited all of my work. During the one-year period of February 2005 to February 2006, for people who were going to half-time or more adjustment-to-blindness training, 31 people toured Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND), 31 toured Vision Loss Resources (VLR), 9 people toured the Duluth Lighthouse for the Blind, one person toured the South Dakota Rehabilitation Center in Sioux Falls, and one person toured the North Dakota Center. There will be a written report coming back to the council to finalize that piece. My concern was that in the first six months there were too many people who were not going to more than one place. Again, there's still informed choice, and people don't necessarily agree with me. If someone says, "Chuk, I only want to go to BLIND Inc., and I'm not going to tour somewhere else, in spite of what your counselor says," then that is the informed choice of that consumer. There are things like that that happen, so I don't think we'll ever be at 100%. I think in the first six months it was about half, if I remember correctly, went to more than one, and for the whole year it was about 39%—roughly four out of ten people. That is just some general feedback.

Another cooperative thing I want to mention briefly, something fairly new. Most of you are aware that SSB is a part of the Department of Employment and Economic Development, and that is the department that runs the workforce centers. That is where our offices are housed also. In those workforce centers there are resource centers—places where people come in, by and large, to get some training on job seeking skills and such, as well as use computers for different training packages as well as surfing the job bank. They had a lot of computers that became available because they were upgrading the fleet, so to speak. We were able to snag a bunch of those, and my idea was to get them out to customers who, for example, may be going to adjustment-to-blindness training. We would have the hard drives cleared and do some basic things to them, and then the community rehabilitation programs (CRP's) could put the access software on for the customers so they could have them at the apartments or the home or some other place—the goal being that practice, practice, practice makes perfect. I sent out a note several weeks ago to the CRP's, and we are pleased to be bringing five of those computers for BLIND Inc. for the use of the staff and customers there. We are pleased to be involved.

I will wind down here, to leave time for questions. I got a question before I got up here, related to the 2007 federal budget, and what impact it will have on SSB. There are many different budgets out there. There are three or four small rehabilitation programs—migrants, supported employment, and two more—and, in the President's budget, their line-item funding would be removed and made part of the overall vocational rehabilitation budget. However, the overall vocational rehabilitation budget would not be increased by the amount of those four smaller programs. The large VR budget would stay the same plus the cost of living increase that it gets under law. So on one hand, there is no cut to the VR budget, and on the other hand there may be these four programs folded in. That is the impact of the President's budget. However, what the President wants to do—and I don't think it will pass—is cut the Department of Labor programs called Title I programs, which are work-related programs, but then target a significant portion of the remaining dollars and put them into a concept called Career Advancement Accounts. The idea there is, up to a certain amount like $3,000 a year, a customer of those other Department of Labor work programs could use the money to buy the services they want. What does that money already go for, after it's even been cut about a third? It goes for the other programs that are in the workforce center and workforce center support. A Department of Labor official has circulated a letter indicating that the workforce centers are a thing of the last century. I didn't know it was that long since it changed!—in fact the bill that set those up was in 1998. The idea was that these career advancement account vouchers could be handed out at community colleges or senior centers, or other existing community outlets, and that the workforce center system wouldn't necessarily need to be the place for the future. States could stay invested in workforce centers if they so desired. There seems to be some change afoot, after they just changed at the federal level. I don't know where that's going to go; there is lively discussion among states across the country including Minnesota about what would happen to workforce centers. That is the long answer to say it probably isn't going to affect us directly. The four areas where the President intends to make cuts amounts to about $60,000, and that would probably be the most impact. Rehabilitation dollars continue to be steady with a slight cost-of-living increase each year, but as I will indicate as I wrap up, the increases don't match the increases in other costs. It is still better than what the Title I general labor programs are experiencing.

I will be unable to stay for lunch and the afternoon as I had planned, because of the legislative activity this afternoon. Legislators are afraid that voters will remember this time, and they want to find solutions. There is nothing at the Capitol that State Services for the Blind is directly involved with related to blindness. There are a couple of items there that I will not talk about because Judy will talk about them later. We support your position on having the word "blind" in the education language. My involvement this year at the Legislature has been with helping the department get some housekeeping things through based on my experience working at the legislature and being part of a legislative team. It's taken a lot of effort and a lot of time, and it's going to cut my day short here. I do anticipate, however, that next year it will be desirable to be active. I have informed the Council over the last year, and I believe I have said it at these events and to Joyce privately is this: what I noticed over a year or so ago is that our income and expenditures are not equal. This means the expenditures are more than income. I have been watching the information and receiving comprehensive reports on the budget, etc. The good news is that our number one expenditure in our vocational rehabilitation program is adjustment-to-blindness training. In fact, over the last three years, from 2003-2006, case services in total have gone up one-and-a-quarter million dollars. For a small agency, that is a sizeable amount at 20%. I would also tell you that the question I'd have if I were sitting in your chair is how much has your administrative expenses gone up, and that is about 5%. We are trying to hold the line on that. For the last year-and-a-half, we have looked at positions that become vacant. For example, we had a VR counselor retire in Bemidji. That is an area that is sparsely populated by blind people. We have made some tough decisions—we are not going to replace that position and will be using a technical support staff person up there. We will use a rehab counselor out of the Hibbing office to cover more territory. We will be looking at those kinds of things as positions turn over and making the cuts where we can and where it is wise to do so. There are a couple of spots within State Services for the Blind other than in our Workforce Development Unit that use federal dollars. One of those is the Communication Center, a service that everyone loves. A substantial amount goes into our blind vendor program as well. I anticipate that if no action is taken, either by a significant reduction of expenditures or a significant increase in income, we will have to take some significant steps effective October 1, 2007. Right now, what I'm thinking about although it's not final—I'll do one more quarter's worth of data before moving ahead with it—but I will try to develop an initiative within the Department of Employment and Economic Development, to attract some state dollars for the Communication Center, and move the vocational rehabilitation dollars into the vocational rehabilitation program. My first hurdle will be within the department. Once I make that proposal, it will probably become "under wraps", because that is what happens when we develop a biennial budget. Next year, that is the job of the legislature, to do a biennial budget that starts on July 1 2007. The timing is good for people to take a look at this, to consider it, and make an informed judgment. There is an election this fall, so what we propose and whether it's approved internally, meaning the department and the governor's office, will be held tightly after this summer. It depends on who gets elected—if it's a sitting governor, the mechanics are already there to move on these requests and get things in place. If it's a new governor, from historical perspective, it takes longer to do, but then the governor would have the opportunity to accept or not accept what was there, and then bring it to the Legislature.

Have we done something like this before? Yes. Back in 1999-2000, when Dick Davis was Assistant Commissioner, we did have a deficiency, and we went to the Legislature, and got those dollars, and they went to the seniors program. It allowed us to have probably one of the best seniors programs, from a funding perspective, in this country. We moved all the seniors out of our VR program and into senior services. This happened one other time back in 1991 or so. At that there was a million dollars difference between expenditures and income. That is the time I referenced earlier, when money from the Department of Education for kids in our Braille unit was come up with for that. We did not cut that but we did cut other positions back then. We are not a heavily-burdened, over-administered agency. If you are a manager or supervisor at SSB, you don't do one thing. Cathy Carlson remarked the other day about not knowing there were so many things to do over here with so little staff. Cathy runs basically everything now administratively. In a larger agency one would have a narrower slice. I don't want to scare anybody, but people who know me know that I like to put things out in front, have time to talk about them, get community involvement, come up with a plan, and move ahead.

I was planning to save the best for last, but then Madam President stole my thunder. I am pleased to announce, however, that I will be attending the 2006 National Federation of the Blind convention in Dallas. I asked Joyce if she would get it changed to Dallas in December, and she tried, but even the vice president of the National Federation of the Blind has limits. I know why there are such good rates at the hotel—because it will be warm! There will be lots to do, and I am looking forward to it—I've never been at one before.

Thank you very much.