MIDWEST AREA CONVENTIONS

MIDWEST AREA STATE CONVENTIONS 2007

March 14-15, 2008 Illinois 2008 convention

IL/MO 2007 Convention Report

Indiana Report-see below

Nov. 2-3 Ohio convention

  Marriott Columbus Airport

  1375 North Cassady Ave.

  Columbus, Ohio 43219

  Phone: 614-475-7551

NOTES FROM INDIANA CONVENTION

March 30, 2007

I wanted to share some of the comments from Steve Connelly as he spoke to the Indiana convention by conference call. Remember these are my recollections and some of it may be lost in translation.

The new budget is more generous than the continuing resolution was.  We have funds for 650 temps, 8775 CO employees and 3019 GS. Indiana was one of the few gainer states receiving 10 new CO positions.  Indiana also received 2 COT positions from the COT/FLOT pool.

Twenty-eight states have submitted office restructuring plans to DAFO. This represents 132 office consolidations. Six states have been approved.  Four states are in the process of wrapping up public meetings.

DAFO has also conducted a review of STO staffing.  This is difficult due to not having workload numbers to guide this process. Surprisingly, STO’s were found to be pretty well equally staffed based on the size of the state workload. 

IT issues. Steve thanked everyone for participating in the testing of the system and this helped identify weaknesses. The switch from MCI to AT&T has also led to some problems that are being corrected.

Steve was asked if there would be relief from 770’s based on results of current reviews. Due to the erroneous payments problem there would be no relief this year.  Check sheets will remain mandatory until results are back from current reviews and then it will be considered whether check sheets could be made optional.

Steve isn’t sure that 2008 eligibility flags will be rolled over next fiscal year.

Background checks are causing some problems for hiring because it is checking both criminal and credit records.  Some are not passing the credit part.