Lessons Learned From the EEOC's Interim Report on Best Practices for the Employment of People with Disabilities in State Government. Presenter: Chris Kuczynski >> RACHEL: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to today's webcast about best practices in employment of people with disabilities in state government. My name is Rachel Kosoy. I am with the Disability Law Resource Project at ILRU, your sponsor for today's event. I'm going to be moderating today's webcast and basically voicing your questions to the presenters we have. So speaking of questions, I wanted to remind you all about questions up front. In order to submit a question, you have a couple of ways to do that. At the bottom of your screen, you should see something -- a button there that says submit question, and you can click that and shoot us a question. Alternately, you can address a question to webcast@ilru.org. If you have any questions at this point you know you'd like us to address, please go ahead and send those in to us now, and then at any point during the presentation you can also send those in and as the presenters pause to take questions, I will pose your question. If anybody has technical difficulties today, please give us a call. The number where you can reach us is (713)520-0232, or you can also E-mail us a question. Okay, today we're going to be learning from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Interim Report on Best Practices in Employment of People with Disabilities in State Government. This report is the -- the presentation is going to discuss this report which really is a review of best practices in four states -- Florida, Maryland, Vermont and Washington -- and the practices that the report reviewed are those that promote employment opportunities for people with disabilities. So we'll begin today talking about the methodology and then really go into the significant findings, and in addition to the presenter from the EEOC, we also have representatives with us today from two of the states who will be able to talk a little more in depth about the activities in their states as well as answer questions for you. So let me briefly introduce all of our presenters to you. First, we have Chris Kuczynski with us. He is the assistant legal counsel and director of the Americans with Disabilities Act Policy Division at the EEOC. In this position, he's responsible for supervising the development of policy guidance, interpreting Title I of the ADA. He also advises the EEOC's field offices, the office of general counsel, and the chair and commissioners on ADA investigations and litigation. He also certainly does hundreds of presentations on the ADA. Mr. Kuczynski has also worked as associate director for disability policy with the White House Domestic Policy Counsel. There he coordinated the implementation of the New Freedom Initiative. Additionally, he served as special assistant to EEOC chair, Cari Dominguez, where he advised her on issues arising under all of the EEO laws that the EEOC enforces and also serving as the agency's representative for the activities related to the New Freedom Initiative. So we have New Freedom Initiative expert with us. Then we have with us on the line also from Washington State, we have with us Toby Olson. He is the executive secretary of the Governor's Committee on Disability Issues and Employment. From Maryland, we have with us two guests today. We have Steve Serra. He is the director for recruitment and examination -- the director for recruitment and examination division in the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, Office of Personnel Services and Benefits. Don't worry, there is not going to be a quiz on this later. And Steve will be able to talk to us about the disability employment work group that's been going on there. Additionally, from Maryland, we have with us Jade Gingerich, and she's the director of employment policy for a newly created department in Maryland, which is the Department of Disabilities, and she has extensive additional experience within the state there as well. So I encourage you to look on our website to find outcome pleat biographical information about our presenters and without further ado, I'd like to go ahead and turn this over to you, Chris, to get started. >> CHRIS: Thank you very much, Rachel, and thank you all for participating in this webcast today. I'd like to extend special thanks to our friends from the states of Washington and Maryland for their participation. There certainly are I think a number of very specific kinds of questions that individuals in the subject states are uniquely positioned to answer and some perspectives that they can provide that unique. What I'm going to be talking about is what we have learned as the result of -- first I'm going to talk a little bit about why we did this project of looking at state best practices, a little bit about the methodology for the interim report, which is basically the methodology that we're going to follow when doing the final report that will cover more states. And then to talk a little bit about what the findings -- what kinds of things we found as a result of our looking at these four states, highlighting the report you should have available to you, but I'm going to highlight just some of the larger most significant issues that we have found when we looked at the four subject states in addition to perhaps toward the end highlighting some areas that we might want to develop further in the final report. So let me talk just a little bit about why we did this project. There are about 5 million individuals employed in state governments throughout the United States. So they represent -- state governments represent a very significant employer throughout the country, very large employer, and in our effort to really implement -- do what we can to implement the New Freedom Initiative, we thought it was very important to take a look at this very large employer and the impact that it can have on the employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Now, it's necessary I think to say a word or two about the New Freedom Initiative. I sometimes assume when I talk about it that everybody knows what I'm talking about, but I've encountered a lot of very sophisticated individuals who have been doing employment work and disability policy for years that really just don't know very much about what the initiative is, and the New Freedom Initiative is basically the administration -- President George W. Bush's comprehensive plan announced in the second week of his -- the first term of his presidency. Comprehensive plan for the full integration of people with disabilities into all aspects of American life. Now, that includes, but it's not limited to employment. It includes things also like education, like integration into the community, housing issues, transportation issues, all of the things that really impact full integration of people with disabilities into the community. Employment is certainly key among them and the EEOC has been doing a number of things in furtherance of the New Freedom Initiative which focuses on technical assistance and outreach to businesses as well as full enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So we've tried a lot of innovative outreach solutions. They are summarized in the beginning of the report, but one of the things that Cari Dominguez has much wanted to do was to look at state employers again as I said because of -- in part because of their size and the impact that they can have as potential sources of jobs for individuals with disabilities to see what is it that they're doing that is worthy of replication perhaps, not only by the states that we look at, but also by other states who are not necessarily participating in this project. We also think that what the states are doing can have a beneficial effect for private employers. I mean, after all, states are -- we all are very well aware and it's sort of interesting that this report has come out at that time when many states are struggling financially and have a lot of challenges that they need to deal with, and yet if it's true that states are doing some innovative things around the employment of people with disabilities and are having success with them, I think that sends a message that even in difficult times it's possible for employers of all types, state and local employers and private employers, to really work out some innovative practices that can really enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities. So we also felt that states are sort of uniquely positioned like the federal government to be a model employer of people with disabilities, and that they do set an example. They are an example to other states and to other employers generally because of their status as state employers. Another concern that we had around which we wanted to do this report was the decision -- the Supreme Court decision 2001 in the University of Alabama vs Garrett case, and as a result of that case, which limited the causes of action that individuals with disabilities have, they can't sue state entities because of the doctrine of sovereign immunity for monetary relief under the ADA, there were some states that actually believed that what that decision meant was that they were no longer subject to the requirements of Title I of the ADA and they couldn't be held accountable for complying with the ADA. The Supreme Court has now made that clear that that was not the case, but we felt this report and that project was a way to send the message to the states that you're still subject to the ADA. You are still -- you should still be doing things to enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities. So we wanted also to send that message. Now, how did we go about doing this project? What was the methodology that we chose? Well, we first looked at four states for the interim report. We're going to look at a total of ten. The first report involves the states of Florida, Maryland, Vermont and Washington State. The final report will look at the practices of these additional six states -- Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Utah. Now, in each of these cases, with respect to the four subject states and the interim report and the total of ten states in the final report, we wanted to look at a number of things to tell us about the best practices of those states. We wanted to look at job application forms, job announcements and position descriptions and in a few minutes I'll describe why we wanted to do that. Written procedures for providing reasonable accommodations if they exist, information for procedures for administering employment tests, where they exit. Maryland, for example, does administer employment tests for some kinds of jobs, perhaps other states do as well. Employee handbooks, manuals on recruitment and selection, directives on EEO and diversity and other documents reflecting best practices related to the hiring, retention and advancement of qualified individuals with disabilities. Those are sort of the four general categories of things that we were looking for. We were looking for best practices, which is what we highlighted in the interim report. In the final report, we're going to do something similar and yet different. We're going to highlight best practices. We're going to give participating states credit for their best practices, but we're also going to highlight in a separate part of the report without identifying specific states, practices that one might consider not so great practices. Practices that might inadvertently have the effect of screening out qualified individuals with disabilities or discouraging individuals with disabilities from applying for jobs. So the last second report will highlight best practices and not so great practices, but not link any of the states to any practices that we would deem to be less than best practices. We wouldn't name particular states in connection with those. Attorneys with our office of legal counsel reviewed documents that the states submitted. We didn't go onsite to review the states partly because of resource source issues that we were confronting, but also because we were able to gather a lot of information from the documents that were submitted and from the follow up phone calls and discussions that we had with state officials. It's noteworthy that when we entered into this project, we did so with the voluntary agreement of the states. We can't require them to participate in this process. They voluntarily did so because they wanted to highlight their best practices and we got commitment to enter into the project from the very top. We went to the governor's offices in the states and it was the governors who said that the state officials -- I want you to provide information to the EEOC for purposes of this project. The project was not a -- what one might call a got ya project where we were looking for things to be the subject of future EEOC charges. In fact, we guaranteed the states that to the extent that we were able to by law, all of the information that they submitted to us would be confidential. The last thing about the project itself is that we are offering participating states technical assistance. That is, if states want to set up venues where we would go and talk to state officials about the Americans with Disabilities Act, about their Title I obligations, EEOC would do that at no charge. We'll also provide less formal kinds of technical assistance in a confidential manner in response to states that call us and ask us for assistance. And that has happened, for example, with respect to the state of Maryland. We know that we're getting some calls because we've now established a relationship with that state as the result of this project. We're now being called upon by that state in an informal way right now to, hey, we have a question about a particular issue, can we run this by you? So it's forging, I think, ongoing relationships with the participating states is that we hope lasts beyond the duration of the interim report and the final report. So that's the technical assistance component. We have in the report itself, and I'm going to talk about the first part initially so I can give our speakers from the states in the interim report an opportunity to talk and for individuals to ask questions about what I've talked about so far, but there are four parts to the report. And part 1 -- and this is laid out in the report itself -- discusses best practices related to the recruitment and hiring of qualified individuals with disabilities. And here we looked at things that states are doing to recruit people into jobs that are generally available to the public as well as things that they are doing specifically for job specifically targeted towards individuals with disabilities. Part 2 discusses ways that the subject states provide reasonable accommodations for qualified employ ease with disabilities and for applicants for state employment, including written reasonable accommodation procedures where they are applicable. Part 3 describes what the states have done to ensure that once hired, individuals with disabilities are treated fair ti and have opportunities for is advancement in state government. And this part talks about, for example, training that states provide on an ongoing basis to their managers and supervisors. And I would note kind of as a preview to coming attractions near the end of this discussion, that this is an area where we hope in the final report to see more information than we have now. It's one thing to hire individuals with disabilities and to have practices in place to do that, but what are we doing, what are employers doing to make sure that they've equal opportunities for advancement? Sometimes individuals with disabilities are hired into a job and it's assumed that they don't have a real desire to advance much further than the position that they're in and they are denied some opportunities for advancement. So I hope that what we see in the final report are even more examples of situations in which we look at what's happening to people once they get on the job. Part 4 describes activities that although not designed to specifically increase employment opportunities in state government, and remember that's what this report primarily focuses on, opportunities for jobs with state employers, but nevertheless, these are practices that promote the employment of people with disabilities generally. There are a couple of things that I would just highlight in this regard kind of early on, and we can talk about them later, but those would include things, for example, like what the state of Florida did when it established in 2004 an office on disability on a statewide level and what the state of Maryland did when it elevated its office on disabilities through legislative action to cabinet level status. I mean, these -- these types of actions by states really send clear messages from the top that individuals with disabilities are a priority in state government. So it's kind of, I think, important to note those things right up front. Now, recruitment and hiring -- a lot of times we are told that the EEOC that employers want to hire people with disabilities, but they can't find anybody who is qualified or they can't find enough qualified applicants and sometimes the reason for that is not the individuals with disabilities aren't out there, but that states and other employers are not looking in the right places. And so part of -- part of increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities is doing some things that are new and different when it comes to advertising and maybe recruiting in different places to attract individuals with disabilities. If you're looking in the same old places, sometimes you're not going to find individuals with disabilities in as many numbers as there are actually out there. Three states, Maryland, Washington and Vermont, reported that they currently undertake targeted recruitment and outreach efforts or that they intend to do so to do so or to enhance existing outreach efforts in the future. And in that regard, for example, the state of Maryland -- the department of budget and management has a coordinator, special outreach and employment programs to assist state agencies in targeting diverse applicant pools for state positions that include individuals with disabilities. And I think that what's noteworthy here is that increasingly what we're seeing -- and I think this is a best practice -- is that we're seeing disability being incorporated into state diversity plans, either within individual agencies or statewide, that diversity -- that disability is becoming part of the diversity model. And that's significant because I think up until very recently when we talked about diversity, we all thought about minorities and women, both racial and ethnic minorities and women, but we didn't really think very much about individuals with disabilities as being part of this model of diversity, as people who add value because of their experiences as individuals with disabilities. So it's significant when states like Maryland and like Washington and Vermont incorporate just recruiting individuals with disabilities as part of their diversity plan. Washington State, a long similar lines, has incorporated -- incorporates disability into its affirmative action plan and when states have to file -- when agencies have to file affirmative action reports, they need to be accountable for what they're doing with respect to the recruitment and hiring of individuals with disabilities. Washington places emphasis on things like cultivating relationships with disability groups, disseminating job bulletins to persons with disabilities, advertising in media that serve or represent persons with disabilities, developing a pool of qualified individuals with disabilities to fill temporary positions in under utilized job groups. Governor Jim Douglas in Vermont issued a series of announcements in October of this year where he himself went -- went on the air in public service announcements emphasizing the importance of hiring individuals with disabilities as part of Vermont's recognition of disability employment awareness month. October is disability employment awareness month nationally, and what we're seeing a lot of is states replicate this at the statewide level. We also see it with Disability Mentoring Day which occurs during the month of October. States replicating these efforts at the statewide level and the governor did a series of announcements. Well, when the governor of a state does an announcement that says that employers ought to hire individuals with disabilities, that sends a very clear message and it should send a message to state agencies as well that hiring individuals with disabilities is an important -- an important priority. What about -- now those are efforts that are all sort of aimed at recruiting individuals with disabilities for jobs that are part of -- that are those jobs available to the workforce, to the public at large, excuse me. There are also jobs that some states -- Rand Vermont and Washington are examples of this -- positions where the states are really targeting individuals with disabilities specifically to fill those jobs. Vermont has some on-the-job training programs for certain positions within the state that are specifically targeted toward individuals with disabilities and individuals with disabilities are recruited specifically to fill those jobs. The thinking is that there are some individuals -- now of course it's desirable to have individuals with disabilities filling the positions that are available to the public at large. Those are -- we want to see people with disabilities integrated, but there may be situations where it's appropriate and where people with disabilities may need some additional training at the outset to perform a job and Vermont certainly in recognition of that has tried to undertake some of those efforts. a very significant legislative action in Washington State in 1997 created a supportive employment program for individuals with disabilities in state government jobs, the agencies can fill these positions with individuals who require on-the-job training and long term support to do their jobs successfully. So, again, this is not that we want every person with a disability in a segregated work situation, but the recognition is in some instances where these kinds of long term supports are necessary, people to do jobs, there are some opportunities within the state for recruiting people into those positions. This was a legislative initiative enacted in 1997, and Washington has apparently, according to what they've reported, have seen dramatic increases in the number of people who have taken advantage of this program. Maybe individuals who would otherwise not have worked in any type of position. In the first year of its existence, there were 23 individuals participating in the program. By 2003 there were 107 individuals participating in the program. I don't know whether Toby will want to talk about that in follow-up remarks. Another thing that we looked at when we looked at recruiting and hiring were job announcements and job descriptions. I mentioned that earlier when I was talking about the kinds of resources from states and the kinds of documents that we looked at from states. I mentioned job announcements and job applications. Why is that important? It's because sometimes job announcements and position descriptions and job applications may deter people with disabilities, may inadvertently cause people not to apply for positions. For example, if you have a job application form that says that somebody needs to have good oral communication skills to perform a job, someone who is deaf and communicates using a sign language interpreter may believe that he or she is not going to be considered for that position. What it may be is that the state has sort of defined the position or the employer has defined the position in the way that it typically understands the job as being performed. That, yes, frequently people speak as a means of communicating information in their jobs, but it certainly isn't necessary for them to do so. What's critical is that information can be communicated and can be communicated clearly and the mode of the communication is not necessarily critical, but you may have these kinds of situations where people are deterred from applying for positions. So we looked at some of the job applications and position descriptions and we found that three states, Florida, Maryland and Vermont, reported that information about the availability of reasonable accommodations for the application process and/or for the performance of the job is included on some or all of their vacancy announcements. That's very critical because although the wrong kind of language in a job description or a job application can deter people from applying if they know that reasonable accommodations are going to be provided, that's going to be an incentive. That's going to tell the person with a disability the state is thinking about individuals with disabilities when hiring for this position. I know that because I see a reference to reasonable accommodation. I'm going to apply for that job. Agencies operating under the Maryland department of budget and management provide all job applicants who take employment tests -- remember I mentioned that is one thing we wanted to look at -- with information about how to request accommodations for the test. Florida reported that as part of ADA training at several state agencies, managers and supervisors are directed to designate those job functions considered essential in job descriptions and to prepare job descriptions prior to announcement of the recruiting for the position. Why is that important? It's important because individuals with disabilities, in order to be considered qualified, are required only to be able to do the essential functions of the job, not those that are marginal, peripheral to the job and we don't want individuals with disabilities being excluded because of the inability to perform a marginal function. So it's very important that -- that job descriptions very specifically define or that states have in mind what are the jobs -- what are the kinds of functions that are really essential in order to be able to perform this position. One last -- couple of last thoughts, states seem to be receiving training, managers and supervisors, on the interview process. How to interview individuals with disabilities and instructing them appropriately concerning things such as the ADA's rules prohibiting disability-related inquiries and medical examinations at the preoffer stage and instructing them on things like disability etiquette, what we have found is that there is a fairly high degree of knowledge or at least there is an opportunity for managers and supervisors and hiring officials -- the states are providing a fair amount of information to those hiring officials, managers and supervisors in order to educate them about the ADA's requirements. Whether everybody is always taking advantage of that is always learning from it, we don't know for sure, but we know that the training opportunities are at least being made available and the information is being communicated in various forms. Mentoring is the last thing I wanted to talk about under recruiting and hiring, and the report talks specifically about two states and what they have done to replicate Disability Mentoring Day. Again, that's something that the Office of Disability Employment Policy within the U.S. Department of Labor and the American Association of People with Disabilities cosponsor nationally. It's now become an international event with participants in many countries throughout the world on the same day -- it's really amazing how it's grown, and states are replicating this. There is a description in the report, for example, of what Vermont is doing and a description of Maryland and how it is -- how it has created a program around Disability Mentoring Day that specifically focuses on working for the state of Maryland, working in state jobs enables individuals with disabilities to job shadow and employees in state government and also to participate in workshops that involve working for -- that involve working for the state of Maryland. So those really are the key four things that we talk about. Again, recruitment and hiring both for positions available to the public and for positions specifically for people with disabilities, job announcements and job descriptions, interviews and providing opportunities for mentoring because it is through mentoring that many people with disabilities get their first introduction to the workforce and learn what's available to them. at this point, we can either go to questions or if the representatives from the states want to follow up on anything I've said, I'd be happy to. >> RACHEL: Okay, this is Rachel. Thanks, Chris, you gave us a lot of information already. This is going to be great discussion. I have a few questions I'd like to pose now and actually I think they'll segue us real nicely into hearing from Toby and Steve and Jade. Just jumping back kind of to the beginning here about the report itself, can you just talk about the time frames for studying the additional six states? >> CHRIS: Sure. We are, again, looking at completing that report and I think the interim report makes this commitment that we'll have the final report out -- we're expecting to have the final report out by October of this year, October 2005. We seem to be on track to do that. Attorneys within our office are looking at various submissions from the states and part of this does depend on our ability to get voluntary -- you know, the states to submit this information voluntarily and in a timely manner so we are dependent in part on the states, but it looks like the time frames are right for the states to get this information in, for us to have an opportunity to evaluate it and complete the final report by October. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. Okay, also kind of going back to the beginning of your comments when you were talking about some of the background and reasons for initiating the project, you talked about Supreme Court decisions that some of the states had a different understanding of. Can you talk about -- even in light of the Supreme Court decisions -- what are the repercussions for the states which do violate the ADA? >> CHRIS: Sure. The Garrett decision that I referred to basically says that individuals cannot bring their own private suits for monetary relief. Now, that leaves open a lot of possibilities. The court said that under a doctrine in a very old case, almost a 100 year old case now called ex parte young, individuals can still bring claims for injunctive relief against state officials. So you could sue -- an individual can sue the head of a department, the health department for example in a state, claiming that you failed to provide a reasonable accommodation and seeking injunctive relief that is compliance with the ADA, but not seeking damages or any other kind of monetary relief. So individuals still have that option available to them. but as importantly, EEOC is still empowered to receive, to process, to investigate and to resolve charges of employment discrimination against state government employers, and we in the process of doing that are empowered to get whatever remedies are available under the ADA, including monetary relief. So we could as part of a settlement agreement that we reach with a state government, we could get compensatory damages. Couldn't get punitive damages because they're not going to be available against a state act, but could get compensatory damages and could get backpay. So those -- as well as injunctive relief like provision of a reasonable accommodation. So we have those powers available to us through our administrative process, that full -- that extensive remedies are available. When it comes to litigating a case against a state government, the Department of Justice has the authority to do that. So if we want -- if we couldn't settle a matter with a state government, we could refer to justice, justice to determine to litigate it and in its litigation the Department of Justice could get whatever -- again, whatever remedies are available under Title I, including monetary relief against the state. And some states have tried to challenge that, but have not been successful. They've tried to challenge the Department of Justice's ability to do that, but they've not been successful. the other thing is just parenthetically, I know we're talking about states, but some local governments have tried to argue that they are an arm of the state and they should have the same protections from suits from monetary relief. That argument hasn't worked. I'm not aware of any cases in which courts have concluded -- although it is possible because some local government entities, depending on how they are defined under law, might be an arm of the state, but in most instances that I'm aware of or in all instances that I'm aware of where local government entities have tried to do that, they have not been able to. So Garrett doesn't even apply and individuals can bring suits for monetary and injunctive relief as well as the federal agencies with the powers that they have, the EEOC and the Department of Justice, with the authority to litigate. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. Okay, then I guess this is kind of a general question. Can you talk about -- did your study look at a breakdown of types of disabilities and severity of disabilities when looking at a promotion of employment of people with disabilities? >> CHRIS: No, we didn't, and in some instances, what we're finding is that states will tell us that we would like to find out that information. We would like to know how many people we have in the state workforce with disabilities, how many people are in our applicant pools with disabilities, but we think that we're not able to get that information or we don't know how to do it. And I do want to just talk about this for a minute because the reason that states -- I think some states believe this is that the ADA does place limits on what you can ask about somebody's disability preoffer and they do place limits on what you can ask once a person is in the job. So employers often will assume, well, we can't survey our workforce and see how people with disabilities are doing in terms of promotions. We're not even supposed to be finding out that they have disabilities as part of the hiring unless there is something that's very visible and obvious. So states really -- and I think this is an important function that we have part of our technical assistance, what we can extend to states in the form of technical assistance, to see if there are ways that -- consistent with the ADA -- they can gather this type of information and use it because I think that there may be some ability to gather, and if what states are doing is using it for what I would loosely call affirmative action purposes, I don't mean by that that they have to set a goal or a quota, if they're using the information to try to benefit individuals with disabilities, and they're not just collecting it out of idle curiosity or they're collecting it to just put it aside somewhere but they're really going to do something if they found find out that people with disabilities are under represented. Then I think there is a possibility for the states to do it, but they have to be very careful because did ADA does have certain rules. Some of them feel that they can't. >> RACHEL: Yeah, because the questioner was really interested in, you know, these look like a lot of best practices, but how do we know the actual effect that they're having. >> CHRIS: I think that's a great point. I think we may not even know all of that in the final report because I don't know that states have been monitoring these things long enough. For example, we get into accommodation, but we know that some of the things that states are doing are sort of positive steps in the right direction that if they are implemented, we believe have the potential to have an impact. >> RACHEL: Okay, this question takes us to Toby from Washington, and this question is about the program that Chris was discussing in Washington where there are jobs reserved for people with disabilities, especially people who need long term assistance, what types of jobs are they? >> TOBY: They are a broad range of jobs and the program opens up the possibility of working with community rehabilitation programs to do job carving, to split out -- split outsets of duties and to create entirely new jobs, but they tend to be entry level positions. They tend to be office support or support positions, but one of -- but one of the advantages of the program is once somebody gets in to one of these jobs, they have all of the -- all of the rights and benefits of any other state employee, once they establish themselves as a permanent state employee, then they get internal promotion preferences and they get access to opportunities for promotion and advancement within the agency and with other agencies. So they're not -- these positions are supportive employment position, they are entry level positions but people are not locked into those entry level positions if they can show that they have -- meet minimum eligibility criteria for positions that would allow them to advance within state government. >> RACHEL: Okay. >> CHRIS: I apologize for interrupting. This is Chris. I believe that it's similar to Vermont also, you know, to the extent that they are recruiting people specifically to fill some entry level positions with people with disabilities that these are, you know, jobs that would certainly lead to other types of possibilities once the individual is in state employment, it's not my understanding -- than is why advancement is very critical -- what are states doing in terms of advancement and I think we need to know more about that, but that once people are in those jobs, they are not required to remain in those positions and should be given opportunities for advancement. Vermont does another interesting thing. I'm unclear how well it works, which is they have a must interview or a mandatory interview for individuals for state jobs if they can demonstrate that they meet the definition of disability and they say they use the ADA's definition, and if they ask for it. Obviously it's not going to be required if the person doesn't request it, but a personal theoretically say that the state of Vermont and people have said I want an interview for this position and I meet the disability definition. >> RACHEL: Uh-huh. >> TOBY: This is Toby again. The other thing I'd like to make sure folks understand is that this supportive employment program is not -- not the only way people with disabilities are moving into state employment or not even the most common way. The program is set up specifically for those folks who are going to need long term supports for employment on the job. Washington State also has affirmative action for people with disabilities. Every agency is required to examine its representation of people with disabilities against availability using multifactor analysis, the way availability is done for other affected groups for affirmative action, for every job class, you know, from officials and administrators and professionals in every job class that they have and to, you know, report on an annual basis the steps that they are taking to address under representations in each job class her they find those under representations. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. Actually this might be a good time to let you guys -- Toby and Steve and Jade, if you guys want to talk a little bit more about some of the programs specific to your states. >> STEVE: Okay, Steve Serra here. I thought I'd talk just briefly about the disability employment work group which we created back in 1999. It started by brainstorming with Jade and her office and my boss, the director for personnel for Maryland state government, and we established this committee with representation across several cabinet level departments and the division of rehabilitation services, and brain stormed on methods for increasing the level of employment of persons with disabilities in state government. So a couple of major things that we did were we established the governor's quest internship program for persons with disabilities that is now in its sixth yore and has been very successful for us. We worked through doors to promote the program and they refer job ready individuals who apply for positions and we solicit the opportunities from state agencies and my office coordinates the program and we pay the individuals a stipend, and it's been very, very successful across many agencies and lots of different types of job opportunities, anything from entry level to professional level jobs. Some other things we did, we had a couple of ADA training conferences for state agencies and we promoted it across -- well, by contacting agency heads and having them assemble teams of experts from employment, EEO, employee relations and they came and we had a train the trainer conference where we shared information and resources and provided them on our website, and then we implemented Disability Mentoring Day the past two years which we plan on continuing and we continue to expand that in the future. and then as far as tracking the individual levels of employment of persons with disabilities, that's been a challenge for us. Recently in our annual EEO report, we started tracking reasonable accommodations and for example, in F. Y. 04 the last EEO report we had 207 requests for a reasonable accommodation and we granted 94 percent of those. And we've been tracking those, but we have struggled with how to get a baseline measure and how to track that over time due to confidentiality issues and also reliability and validity of the numbers that we would get because people have different understandings of whether they would consider themself an individual with a disability or whether they want to self-identify. >> JADE: I also want to pointed out because Chris alluded to this earlier but it's a really important point, the quest internship program was created at a point in time and in fact continues to exist in the context of a state that has an ongoing hiring freeze. I think the first year that we did quest we did not have a hiring freeze, but for the past five years, we've been under a hiring freeze. So the fact that we've been able to, a, preserve funding for this and B, to allow the program to grow was a real tribute to success and also it was a means of us trying to do something during a time frame when we recognized that we weren't going to be able to do as much in terms of recruitment while Maryland does do some hiring through a waiver process, they tend to be the more higher level jobs for people who have more work experience and while we certainly try to include people with disabilities in part of our outreach, we found that a lot of our folks in Maryland really needed entry level jobs of which Maryland state government has very few opportunities and has have for the past several years because of the hiring freeze. So the internship program was an excellent way, and in fact we have had a number of individuals convert to contractual jobs within the agencies in spite of the hiring freeze which again has demonstrated the success of that internship program. >> RACHEL: Great. Actually, Jade, this is Rachel. You sort of led us into another issue that some of the listeners are bringing up, and Chris had alluded to initially if you can talk a little bit about the cost of different initiatives and also some of the benefits. You know, maybe what the state is having to put out but also what the state is getting in return. >> STEVE: Okay, in terms of who we put out, other than staff time for the internship program, we pay a 3,000-dollar stipend. So for the most part, we've been funded initially $50,000 a year and then it was cut a little bit one fiscal year to 25 and then we got it pushed back up to 75,000. And we've stuck with that over the past couple of years. So we've had about, oh, 25 or so internship positions and for a three month equivalent, full time equivalent experience, they get a 3,000-dollar stipend to help offset the costs of work expenses such as travel, clothing, food, et cetera, and that's worked very well for us because we've had a hiring freeze and we've had a cap on the number of allocated positions even for contractuals in state government. So this has been a way to work around that. in terms of the benefit, I think as part of our workforce planning strategy, you know, we really need to reach out to all segments of the labor market and that's going to be more important over the next decade as more baby boomers start to retire and so as part of a workforce planning strategy, you know, we've increased emphasis on, you know, reaching out to all different segments. We have other programs that we've developed recently after quest, kind of modeled after quest. We have a high school work study and mentoring program for Baltimore city high schools. We got through a grant that we were successful in getting through IP M. H. A. and we're hoping to find the funding to continue the program. And we're just implementing another program for welfare to work, for persons who are receiving benefit from the state, temporary cash assistance, we are hooking them up with state agencies in the Baltimore area as a pilot, kind of as we would use a temp agency and providing them with very valuable work experience. Now, if we didn't have a hiring freeze right now and there were more positions available, I know we could be placing a lot of these folks because we've had such excellent feedback. We do collect information on how well they do in the internship and evaluate their performance and we even get requests to get exemptions from the hiring freeze because they're trying to hire quest intern for example and we have emphasized to agencies to be sure to let us know if that's what the case is because my boss has been very supportive in trying to do that wherever possible. >> TOBY: and in Washington -- well the cost for the different projects are kind of split up. It's hard to pull them together, but in the very early years of the Americans with Disabilities Act we had an allocation through the governor's office of about $2 million in operating funds for implementation activities related to the ADA and a task force that reported directly to the governor. >> RACHEL: I'm sorry, Toby, this is Rachel. Did you say two or ten? >> TOBY: Two. Two. And a task force that reported directly to the governor on activities and we were able to do a number of things with those, create a reasonable accommodation cost pool that agencies can borrow from and then repay for scheduled expenses related to reasonable accommodations, establish centralized Brailing center that agencies can use to produce materials in other alternate formats, put together a training cadre that spent the first four years after implementation of ADA doing customized training with, you know, down to very small unit sizes and in various agencies and up to, you know, very large scale trainings where we had six or seven hundred people come to them for a couple of days. We had a cadre of full time trainers that were funded under that. And equipment -- adaptive technology, loan program, you know, was established for that and a number of other initiatives were put together in the very early stages of using that initial allocation, and since then all of those programs have just been folded into the ongoing operational budgets -- well, except for the training cadre, that has gone away, and the training component is much more intermittent and not full time trainers now as we had in the early years, but these other elements have all been folded into the ongoing operate al budgets of the agencies where they've been housed. So it's hard to -- it would be difficult to come up with a dollar number for these ongoing activities. >> RACHEL: Okay, that's helpful. Chris, do you want to -- I have a few additional questions at this point, but did you want to take the mic wake for a little while? >> CHRIS: Well, let me talk for a few minutes, Rachel. You know, my co-present ars have done a lot of my work on some of the latter sections because the report mentions a lot of things, the quest program, the Washington State training, several other types of training that states have done. Really, the emphasis on part 3 of the report on ensuring that individuals with disabilities who are on the job are treated fairly, focuses largely on training activities, ways that states on an ongoing basis have tried to educate their managers, their front line supervisors on the importance -- on first of all the ADA, and the importance of complying -- not only complying, but offering individuals with disabilities the opportunity for advancement. Some states -- I think Maryland was, you know, emphasized the importance of creating mentoring opportunities and opportunities to work in other areas, details you know to increase one's job skills to promote sort of upward mobility. So a lot of the section 3 really does focus on many of the training opportunities that have already been mentioned. I'm not going to focus -- repeat what my co-presenters have said. I wanted to talk though for few minutes about reasonable accommodation because obviously not every person with a disability needs a reasonable accommodation, not every ADA situation involves a reasonable accommodation, but certainly many individuals do. And I would say, first of all, that I look forward, Steve Serra, to getting that information about what you learned about tracking and the number of accommodation requests that you've been able to track and their disposition, 94 percent of them having been granted. I think that's very encouraging. I'd like to include that -- because we have some information about tracking in this report, but we don't have those numbers, and I'd like to include them in the final report because that does give an indication of how well the accommodation program is working, but what I want to talk about just very briefly are a few things about accommodations. First of all, the importance of reasonable accommodation procedures, the what happens when a reasonable accommodation is denied and what sort of procedures are put in place in connection with denials. the issue of training very briefly, specifically with some statistics from Vermont. Vermont is not here to talk about them, so I'll mention a few things that they found when they did some tracking and some surveying at least, and then just to emphasize the innovative accommodation solutions that we cited in the report are things that specifically Toby has mentioned in connection with Washington State. But written reasonable accommodation procedures, we think, are very important at EEOC. We are the agency that coordinates the federal government's implementation of written reasonable accommodation procedures, they've been required under an executive order issued in July of 2000. They've been requested since -- in the federal government since 2001. July of 2001 I have to tell you that not every agency has even yet met its obligation and so I appreciate the challenge that states have in trying to get this done, but we don't have any sort of centralized federal government set of procedures, and even if we did, I think we would want agencies to look at them and not just block copy them on the computer, but to make some innovation that is unique to their agencies. So many agencies have done it. A few have not. A few that know better should -- have not, but we see this replicated at the state level with respect to states that we looked at in the interim report. Specifically Vermont and Washington State have reported to us that they have statewide reasonable accommodation procedures -- written reasonable accommodation procedures, and there is -- and in Washington State, since 1993, I think this is noteworthy because we have an executive order that goes to 2000 in the federal government, but Washington State was ahead of the curve on that, at least as far as we're concerned and in 1993 under an executive order they required that all agencies, Washington State with 50 or more employees, have written procedures. Maryland, I think is somewhat different because of the nature of its personnel system. You have the personnel systems for all the states are some what different and that was one of the reasons we chose the states we did in addition to their geographical diversity, the size of their workforces and also who was willing to participate voluntarily in the study. Not every state was, but Maryland I think has different personnel systems that are somewhat less centralized. And so at least our report doesn't indicate that there was a central procedure, but many of the agencies probably have their own. Florida is similar in the sense that the procedures that exist appear not to be on a statewide basis, but appear to have been enacted at the individual agency level, and some state procedures -- some agencies within the state of Florida do have, but written procedures are important because they tell employees what they have to do to request an accommodation, what they have to expect as part of the process. They tell people who come in contact with individuals with disabilities how to recognize a request, it's amazing how many employers often don't even know what's required or not required to constitute a request. It's very simple, straightforward kind of thing and it doesn't always come neatly packaged nor do individuals always use the words accommodation or ADA to request them. So procedures tell people what to do as part of this interactive process that we say is so important in the process of providing reasonable accommodation. Washington and Vermont have them. Florida has them at the agency level. We don't specifically know Maryland, but maybe one of our speakers can speak to what Maryland is doing. We also talked about procedures related to denials of reasonable accommodation. Why is that important? Well, because often a lot of problems can be a verted in terms of employers and their own concerns about liability if they offer a very clear explanation, if they have very clear reasons for why they did what they did when they denied an accommodation, but I think more importantly it's a good idea to have good procedures concerning denials of accommodations because you may find that something that has been denied is something that ought to have been granted, and maybe there needs to be some checks and balances in the process so that something is just not denied out of hand and that there is -- and that if it is going to be denied or if an agency is considering a denial, that it really goes through a careful thought process about that. And Washington State, for example, requires if you're going to deny something based on cost, you need to have that signed by the head of the agency. That means that it's got to go up to the very highest levels within the agency before that denial can happen. And if it is denied, there is to be some reason given for why the accommodation has been denied and the agency is going to be expected to have considered available sources of funding, including the pool -- the accommodation funding pool that Toby mentioned. Florida's department of state's reasonable accommodation record, the reasonable accommodation record is a form that they have, requires managers to explain, among other things, why an accommodation was not provided and requires that denials be submitted -- this is critical -- to the department's bureau of human resources prior to denying the accommodation. That helps to ensure that the denials are properly justified and all possible accommodations have been considered. So again, sort of checks and balances. Vermont has an interesting concept. It has a statewide reasonable accommodation committee that is sort of an appeal process. If the agency has denied an accommodation, somebody can ask that it be reviewed by the reasonable accommodation committee and reconsidered that way. The committee can't make a binding decision, but it can issue an advisory opinion to the agency as to whether the accommodation should be -- should be granted. Maryland has talked a little bit that tracking is very important. Tracking is important because it helps us -- and federal agencies are supposed to do it -- to determine whether our processes are working. Are we denying too many accommodations? Are we denying specific kinds of accommodations? If we see a pattern of denials of specific kinds of accommodations, maybe there is a problem. If we see that too many accommodations or a an awful lot of ake days are being denied, what is that telling us? Is it telling us we're getting a lot of frivolous requests or maybe we need to do something about our procedure. If there are time lines for providing reasonable accommodations, and one Florida agency employs a time line within which requests have to be sent to the disability coordinator, for example, within two days of the time you receive a request. You've got to get it to the disability coordinator so it can start getting processed. Well, tracking can tell us if we are not doing a good job on complying with our time frames, our procedures. Now, we heard about Maryland's tracking. In 2003, the Vermont department of personnel conducted a survey of state employees, and the survey was -- I think there was a 45 percent, according to the information we have in the report, 45 percent response rate and something like 1400 -- 1443 to be exact -- state employees responded. That's 1443 out of -- it wasn't mailed to everybody. So it represents a 45 percent response rate on the employees to whom it was mailed and there are a total of about 8,000 state employees in Vermont. The smallest of the state workforce is -- Florida has the largest. 17 percent of state employees responded identified themselves as having a disability within the meaning of the ADA. And that closely matched the 2000 census data. Of those, who self-identified disabled state employees, 45 percent of those said that their disability had started before they came to work for the state and 68 percent said that their primary disabling condition was physical. More than half of the 38 percent who indicated that they had -- who indicated that they requested accommodations responded that they had no problems receiving them. So 38 percent of those who identified themselves as disabled said we requested reasonable accommodations. Not everybody needs one, but a substantial number of people did, and the few who did have problems said that they encountered problems, of those, 28 percent of those who said they encountered problems received accommodations other than the ones they had requested. An employer has the right to make a decision as to which accommodation to provide if there is more than one effective accommodation. So even though some people didn't get exactly what they requested, many of them got an accommodation -- many of them did get the accommodation they requested, many others got some accommodation even if it wasn't exactly what they asked and here is something that's telling, only 3 percent ever felt that they had been discriminated against in the workplace based on their disability, either by other state employees or by the public. So I think that's kind of interesting. Innovative accommodation solutions, Toby has mentioned a lot of them I think already. We have noted one -- the department of personnel in Washington has a website, diversity chat, which is a series of articles addressing reasonable accommodation issues under the ADA intended to outline or intended to provide a broad outline of facts and general guidance, again, there is plenty of information apparently out there for managers and supervisors who want to look for it concerning reasonable accommodations. the general administration established a central pool of assistive technology. I think Toby mentioned that, and a statewide Braille center to provide materials in alternative formats, Braille access center to individuals with disabilities, not only who are state employees, but who are also people receiving other kinds of services from the state and a state taping center was developed at central Washington University to provide all state agencies and institutions with the capacity to produce audio versions of printed materials. I wanted to mention one other thing to just backtrack for a second on forms for reasonable accommodation. This is sort of part -- I think this goes sort of under tracking. Part of the way you can track reasonable accommodation requests and their disposition is to create a form. You don't need it in order for the person to actually request the accommodation, but sometimes -- and the federal government does this -- at least we're supposed to create a form that indicates when it was -- when the accommodation was requested, what happened to it, why was it granted, why was it denied, or certainly why was it denied at the very least is what federal agencies are doing. But Florida's Department of Transportation's form prominently includes the toll free phone number and TTY number of the Job Accommodation Network. Everybody out there has probably heard of JAN, maybe you've used it. It's out of the University of West Virginia and it provides advice on accommodation issues to employers and expert advice, and they provide that and its alerts managers and supervisors to the fact that, hey, there is this resource out there. You ought to check it out before denying an accommodation, and then it can be determined at least in that agency whether JAN has been consulted before an accommodation has been denied as indicated on the form. I thought that was sort of a nice innovation that puts employers on notice of that very important resource. >> RACHEL: Great. Do you -- Toby, Jade, did you guys want to jump in at this point? >> JADE: I just wand to talk a little bit about Maryland's reasonable accommodation process. As Chris pointed out, we are very decentralized, but we do gather the ADA coordinators on a quarterly bases for training and to share strategies and we are looking at coming up with some model forms for reasonable accommodation policies and procedures that they might want to consider using, but we're not in a position to dictator to adopt one set of forms in part because of the variations in our personnel system, we have several separate distinct personnel systems and different issues related to those different systems. but we do do the quarterly basis. We actually had an individual who had retired from the Department of Jesus consult with us and meet with each of the ADA coordinators and put together a report and in fact -- that report was part of the materials Chris that we submitted. The finding was in fact the problem was not under accommodating, but in fact over accommodating at times so we are not overly concerned about denial of accommodation, although we do want to make certain of the quality of the accommodations and as a matter of fact the accommodation is really necessary. What we have found as a state is that they tend to -- supervisors tend to provide an accommodation without really going through the full process, the problem then comes up when as a result of budget shortfalls or for example the hiring freeze, people were being allowed to work on a particular shift in theory on the basis of disability, although never documented or determined and with the hiring freeze, the state no longer had the luxury of being able to let people work the shifts that they want. They needed to have people work all the shifts and going back and then trying to request documentation to determine whether or not it was an appropriate accommodation is one of the things that we're looking at how we can do differently. We are also looking, as a result of our department and disability state plan, which does give us more capacity across state agencies to request and to ask for support, we're going to be sending a letter out to all the cabinet secretaries reminding them of their ADA responsibilities and encouraging them to utilize their ADA coordinate mores more because that I would say is the greatest flaw in our current system is that we have wonderful ADA coordinators, but they usually don't get brought in until something has become a problem and the more that we can involve them earlier on in the process, we find the more successful the outcome and we're also encouraging agencies to use their ADA company ort Nate tors to weigh in on policy decisions related to services to people with disabilities and so forth because we feel like it's not just a matter of the state as an employ, but also the state as an entity that provides services to people with disabilities that we want our ADA coordinators to be informed and to participate in that process. We are also looking at pending funding and so forth, again, the potential of having a reasonable accommodation fund that can be drawn down against because state budget processes are done so far in advance that if, for example, you were to hire a person who happened to be blind, who required some more extensive technology, your budget is so -- was planned so far in advance and then at the end of the year if you haven't used up the money, that becomes a problem and you have to give it back and you can't really plan money for reasonable accommodations on the off chance that somebody does get brought on board because you get penalized if you have money left. So we're looking at a way to perhaps have a mechanism that can be drawn down and alleviate some of those problems. We're trying to look at some of the procurement issues because procurement can be a very slow process to get the technology that's required and so we're looking at how we can expedite that process so that state employees who require it can have that as quickly as possible. >> TOBY: Well, this is Toby and I'll just mention a couple of things. One is as Chris mentioned, we do have a reasonable accommodation revolving fund and it functions very much a long the lines of what Jade was talking about. It's not intended to cover in all accommodation costs or small accommodations that don't really cost much, but if an agency is in a situation where they have an accommodation that has a significant expense and something that they weren't able to budget for, then they can borrow the funds from our cost pool and they are required to repay the funds in the next budget cycle. So that might mean that they would have to include that funding request in their request to the legislature in order to be able to repay the funds. Another thing I'd mention is we don't exactly have a single statewide reasonable accommodation set of policies and procedures. What we have is a direction from the governor that every agency has to have a reasonable accommodation policy and reasonable accommodation procedures that meet criteria that are laid out in a guideline, set of guidelines that was developed and issued by our ADA implementation task force that reported to the governor. And there is a requirement that each of those policies has to be then reviewed to make sure that it complies with the guidelines laid down in those guidelines. That all happened, as Chris said, back in '93. Since then, we've seen a fair amount of drift in some of the policies and procedures that are current practice in some of our agencies, and we're now in the process of taking another look at all of that with our new governor, and we may be updating those guidelines that were issued in '93 and asking agencies once again to go through that process of submitting their policies and procedures for review and ensuring that they comply with the new updated guidelines. >> RACHEL: Okay. I'm watching our time and we've just got five minutes left. I have a specific question I'd like to go ahead and pose because we did get it in, and then Chris maybe I'll turn it over to you to try to tie up for us. This just to the questioner, I'm paraphrasing your question a little bit. She wants to know if the following question on a job application is legal or not. Apparently on the application under the heading essential job requirements, the question is now written -- apparently this is an updated better version -- the question is, is there any reason why you cannot perform the essential functions of the job and then they're asked to circle yes or no. Chris, can you talk to that? >> CHRIS: I don't believe that that -- you know, I have to qualify this somewhat. I guess I'd have to see what the essential functions were and if they were defining the essential functions in a way that was very much geared towards sort of physical ability -- to one's physical ability or something like that, you know, if the essential job function was you have to be able to lift ten pounds and that -- and then the question was can you perform the essential functions, is there any reason you couldn't perform the essential functions, I might under those circumstances say, well, perhaps it's a disability-related question because -- if the requirement is that you be able to lift ten pounds, the only reason probably that the person is going to not be able to meet that requirement is going to have to do with some sort of physical impairment. And that would be disability-related, but just -- you know, if you had a number of different functions, job functions, and you said is there any reason you can't perform these functions, again, recognizing that it depends on how those functions are written, generally I would say that is not a disability-related question. And the reason it's not is because we say it's a disability-related question is one that is likely to elicit information about a disability and what likely to elicit information about a disability means is if there are -- if the answer to the question is likely to be something that will reveal -- is likely to be something that is disability-related, or related to somebody's impairment, then it's going to be an unlawful question, but if there are many possible answers to the question, only some of which are related to a disability, then the question is not going to be disability-related. So just because one applicant -- the reason one applicant may not be able to do it is related to a disability doesn't make it disability-related. If there are many possible answers and only some of them relate to disability, then it's not illegal, and there are probably many reasons why, depending on what the function is, there may be many reasons why unrelated to disability why somebody can't perform the function. >> RACHEL: Okay. >> CHRIS: Sorry I had to qualify it that much, but not knowing what the application says, it's impossible to answer. >> RACHEL: Right. Right. Well, I think what the questioner was getting to is she thought that it should probably read is there any reason why you cannot perform the essential functions of the job with or without a reasonable accommodation? >> CHRIS: Right, but that would be -- that's not required. We say that you can ask can you perform the essential functions with or without a reasonable accommodation, but I don't think that the failure to include that is -- makes it disability-related if there are lots of nondisability-related reasons that would prevent you from performing it. >> TOBY: Chris? And it would also be true, failure to include that would not preclude a person from answering that question yes, even if the applicant knew that they would need a reasonable accommodation. >> CHRIS:That's correct. The person could read the question to, you know, as meaning, yes, I could perform this function with an accommodation, so I'm going to answer -- I'm going to answer there is no reason that I can't do the functions of the job because I could do them with an accommodation. That would be an honest answer. >> RACHEL: Right. This question probably wouldn't make it on the list of best practices, but I feel that was a really helpful analysis and I say to the questioner, if you have any follow-up questions, please get back to us about it. Okay, we are at the end of our time before I close out and say thank yous. Is there anything else, Chris, that you wanted to make sure to emphasize to people? >> CHRIS: I would just say I think three things real quickly, that we're encouraging to us. First of all, in looking at the four states, first of all, that there appear to be as I said a lot of opportunities for training and get information about people with disabilities and the ADA to manager and supervisors in the workforce. Second, that we're encouraged with what we are seeing to the extent we have seen written reasonable accommodation procedures, we think they are very important as well as clear procedures that require accountability for denials of accommodation, and we're very glad to see that states seem to be going in the direction of incorporating disability into their diversity programs generally. We think that's really important. >> RACHEL: Okay. Well, great. Thank you very much, Chris. And also Toby and Steve and Jade, you guys give us a lot of information and I can tell you as somebody who works with a lot of employers who have questions about implementing the ADA and promoting the employment of people with disabilities, that all this information is very helpful because it gives a lot of more specific examples. And so we will look forward to learning from the additional states as well and perhaps Chris you'd be willing to come back at that point and talk to us about additional lessons you've learned. >> CHRIS: I would like to do that. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. So thank all of you and I also would like to acknowledge NIDRR, who funds your host for today's program which is the Disability Law Resource Project. If you have additional questions, please feel free to E-mail us or to call us or any of the ADA centers at our 800 number, which is 800-949-4232. Today's webcast will be archived. So for regular listeners, it's usually archived within a day. This one will not be up and available until next week, but it will be available for people to listen to as well as get the transcript. and finally, I'd like to thank some others who have made today possible. On our ILRU webcast team, we have Marj Gordon, Sharon Finney, Dawn Heinsohn, Vinh Nguyen, Maria Dell Bosque, Rob Dickehuth, and Marie Bryant, our realtime captioner. So, again, thank you to all the presenters and we look forward to working with you again in the future. Have a great afternoon everybody.