Committee members convened at 3:30 pm using virtual meeting platform.
PRESENT: Luke Shorty, Bill Guindon, Celeste Branham, Pam Proulx-Curry, Diane Lebson, Jenni Tilton-Flood, Chelsey Fortin-Trimble, Maryalice Crofton.
Discussion Items.
A. Appointments to Commission. Recommendations have not been presented to the Governor. That office intends to present them to her before mid-September.
B. Draft charge for new board Program Committee. This was not emailed to Exec members. It will be sent after this meeting so they can comment and edit on time for finalizing before the board meeting.
C. Board Retreat. Response to attendance plan request has been light. Maryalice will resend the notice. Kaira sent a draft agenda to Luke and it was adjusted based on feedback. Thomas College will be the location for both the Board retreat and public meeting. The cost is just under $2,000.
D. Statute changes. The process for changing fiscal agents involves some simple language changes in the Commission statute but also offers an opportunity to fix a very long-standing problem in the statute. The Commission was directed to make decisions by consensus but, years ago, the Maine Attorney General’s office advised the board may not use consensus. It must take formal votes and record those. Draft changes were shared with Exec and members had no concerns. They will now go to GOPIF to be included in the bill they are compiling. The final language would read as follows:
§7503. Duties
The commission shall:
1. Vision. Develop a state vision statement for national, state and community service;
2. Ethic of service. Demonstrate an ethic of service through its activities, policies, and procedures and annually evaluate how effectively these are fostering the state vision and service ethic;
§7504. Staff and administrative services
The Maine Office of Community Assistance shall provide staff and administrative services as follows.
1. Executive director. The Director of the Maine Office of Community Assistance, in consultation with the commission, shall hire an executive director as a member of the Office staff. The executive director oversees day-to-day operations of the commission, hires staff members with the approval of the commission and the Office Director and carries out other responsibilities as directed by the commission.
2. Administrative services. The Maine Office of Community Assistance shall provide the executive director and the commission with continuing administrative support as appropriate. The Maine Office of Community Assistance may establish a dedicated account on behalf of the commission to receive funds contributed by private and public agencies for use solely for commission purposes.
C. Reclassifications and new positions. Commission plans are moving forward. The one change is that the vacant Senior Planner position cannot be paired with the climate corps general fund appropriation because of a statute quirk. The resolution is creating another 5-year limited term position to go with the climate corps funding. It will require advertising the job and going through the hiring process. Other changes underway: reclass of the Exec Director position to Public Service Manager II has moved forward to state HR; establishing a Maine Service Fellows team leader under the NOAA grant is in the works with Dept of Education leaders; and changing the Secretary Specialist to a Management Analyst will be next. All of these will appear as initiatives in the DOE budget so that the budget for MOCA can pull them over into their budget. In the budget process, the adjustment of funding sources for positions is reflected.
D. Impact of reclassed positions on budget. When positions are created in state government, the type of funding source is attached to the job. Some of those original (1994) alignments are problematic now so we are trying to use the move to adjust funding sources. The Exec Director position is most impacted by this. It has been 100% federally funded which means some actions are prohibited (e.g., fundraising). By changing funding to be 60% federal and 40% state, there is latitude to engage in a broader set of actions. The PIO position and Management Analyst positions would also be split across federal and state funds. The climate corps coordinator will be solely on the climate corps state appropriation which is ongoing. These changes require an additional $146,434 in general funds which would result in having the Commission operating grant fully matched as required by law. The constant annual risk of whether we could generate sufficient in-kind to cover match would be eliminated.
E. Covering staffing gap. The Transition Task Force has learned two things that impact the hiring timeline of the next Executive Director. First, reclassification of the position to a more appropriate civil service rank will take about 6 months. That means February 2025 is the most likely approval/change date. Second, a position cannot be advertised unless it is 30 days before the job becomes vacant. Consequently, a reasonable timeline for hiring the next ED would be posting after the reclass in February and completing the process (search, interview, offer, start) end of May or even June, if the new person is coming from out of state. This means there is a gap of 5-6 months between the expected retirement of the current Exec and arrival of a new person. It’s the same time frame when budget, legislative, and move to new fiscal agent will unfold.
Luke outlined four options for Exec to consider and discuss: appoint interim from retired state service commission Eds; appoint interim from within Maine state government (someone with HR, budget, and legislative experience); appoint interim from within current staff; or ask current Exec to postpone retirement.
After initial discussion, Exec members decided to hold a special meeting for candid discussion and go into Executive Session (as defined by law) so they could have candid conversations about internal options without being in a public meeting. They set September 16 at 2:30 for the meeting so there could be a recommendation to both the full board and Dept of Education by the retreat. Maryalice was asked to post the required notices. Luke will check with AAG Sarah Forster on rights of staff and procedures. Several members are familiar with school board rules but not sure whether those apply to this situation.
F. Other. Because the meeting was already beyond the posted end time, task force reports were limited to time needed on the agenda. The Grants task force will make recommendations on the planning grant ant rural operation grant competitions.
Executive Committee members ended their meeting at 4:42 pm.