anya casey, who is the employment coordinator for our california department of rehabilitations. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you. i am so happy to be here and thank you for this opportunity to speak to the issue of rule 115. and it is obviously everybody is here in the spirit of good will and thank you for your leadership around this issue. so, i work for the state of california, or the department of rehabilitation. and our job is to help people with disabilities to transition back into work. we help to fund whether it is retraining or i need to go to the city college and i need to get new skills or assistive technology and that kind of thing. and we help to job match our consumers at the end of that process.

we and my own office have 22 percent of our staff are people with disabilities. and we know this, because 22 percent of our staff came in on our state hiring program, which is called leap limited examination i can't remember what the a, stands for. and i will have to look it up. >> limited examination and process is the p. and i will be happy to get you that information, 22 percent of our staff came in on the leap as did i. i will tell you that as somebody who came in as a person with a disability, who experienced being hired by an employer that took a chance to me to do a good job. i am more than happy to disclose my disability and i can tell you that the reason that we know that 22 percent, you know of our staff, with the

disabilities because they are going to do the same and we know this by virtue of self-disclosure. and we do, you know, the state organization, we do not coerce people into disclosing, but we have a voluntary state wide not just in the department rehab, we have the voluntary disclosure. and so you will get an e-mail every year and would you like to disclose that you have a disability? we do three workshops about hiring people with disabilities. we do one on the leap process, and that is to help our consumers also, access leap jobs, and state jobs, and we do one on federal hiring process. and i should say that similar to programs to rule 115, so non-competitive hiring for people with disabilities. and leap is a state one, schedule a is the federal one. we do workshops on them every month, and we are chomping at the bit to add the workshop for

to show the people how to get hired, under rule 115, we have mentioned rule 115 to our clients and it was, hey, i went on the website, and for the city and county jobs and i just don't see any rule 115 jobs, under there. we love the city of san francisco, you guys hired the most, you were the number one employer of clients who came to our door, or through our doors last year and actually we celebrated you at our christmas or holiday rather, party. and so we love the city of california, i mean that we love the city of san francisco, and yeah. thank you so much for taking your leadership role in this position. >> miss casey, could i just ask you how, i think that are there three different tiers of disability, there is like general, and then there is severely disabled, and then

there is most significantly disabled? ; is that correct?? and can you give us some examples of the differences of the types of disabilities? >> yes, certainly, so i think what you are talking about is for a person who wants to transition back to work, okay? so come through our doors and go and look, i don't know what to do i lost my job. i need to get retraining, okay, for the three levels, come in, i need to either get retraining or i need to get a job and i need your help with that. where the three levels come in is state of california has been broke and we are doing better now because of the limited funding, we have established priorities. so as to how we serve those clients, who gets served first. and so people are divided into those three categories and then they get serviced according to our funds, how much we have in

our coffers. we have just opened up our category three, which you mentioned, we just opened up, during the week, actually we got an e-mail and the people in category three, are now eligible for services but the three, the three just to clarify, so the three categories that you are talking about is more to do with the eligibility of the department of rehab services in the first place, does that make sense? >> my understanding for the rule 115 is that you have to get some certification from the department of rehabilitation that you are severely disabled? ; is that correct?? >> you know, because we have not had people come through looking for 115, certification, i am too young to know about that, i can't say that about

many things. >> i wasn't around in the 80s when people were coming to the doors saying how do i get eligible for rule 115. what i can tell you is that for the schedule a, you know, everyone who comes through our doors, is eligible for those, is eligible for those programs. >> okay. >> yeah. >> and then can i just ask. >> yeah. >> what would make somebody severely disabled verses generally disabled, and if somebody is unemployed right now, and they need to establish that they are severely disabled, what would be some of those factors and i think that it has to do with at least one of your physical senses. >> significant barriers with that but if you could distinguish what the general disability and what is a severe, and a person who is severely disabled? >> okay, sure, for the purposes

of eligibility of, and okay, so for, schedule a or leap. what is you are looking for and again, i am sorry that i can't speak to the rule 115. and so to my knowledge of it is that eligibility for scheduling a or for leap, a doctor needs to sign-off to say that you have a condition which significantly limits a daily life function. and you know, most all of our consumers, that we serve that can be from i can't dress myself and i have trouble keeping a job. but i would love to connect you with someone who is doing less guess work than i, it is not my function but i can connect you

with hr that can clarify those questions for you. >> okay. thank you so much. >> okay. and i see no other questions and thank you for being here, and thank you for honoring the dhr department as well. the next couple of speakers and there are a number of community based organizations that are here but i want to just thank, jonathan lions the president of the fdr democratic club in the city and i forgot to mention that jessica is here as well. why don't we start with jonathan and we will keep the community comments as short as we can, as well. so that we can get to all of the public comment.

>> i am president of the fdr, democratic led of san francisco and first you know, the official stuff out of the way, and just for the record, i am proud to say that i am the city employee. and but i am here on high own time. and not even being paid to be here. but, at on behalf of the fdr and democratic level i want to say thank you to the board of supervisors to taking up this issue, and a specific thank you to supervisor mar. long time advocate for the

committee and thank you for championing the issue, and i want to thank all of the advocates that are in the room and the city staff as well and you know, you can't have have a more qualified hard working caring staff and i think that is the benefit of this issue is that we are coming at this issue from the same desire, to increase the hiring and the employment of people with disabilities in the city service >> what we are talking about here is what that means is empowerment through employment and it is empowering people by helping them get jobs and by further get into the weeds on this issue i think that it is important to paint the picture of really where are we? how we measure the number of people with disabilitied and those who are not employed, and on this slab is a chart, a bar

chart that indicates that the unemployment rate and the disability community is about twice as high as it is in the non-disabled community. and you know, this rate was not even tracked for years and it was not until january of 2009, that the bureau of labor statistics at the federal department of labor even started to track the number of people with disabilities, that were not employed. and just for the los angeles in the room, because the number of, and because this data has not been tracked. for so long, it is not seasonably adjusted so, on the chart that i am displaying here is the unemployment rate that i am comparing to in the non-disabled community is also not seasonably adjusted so we are comparing apple to apples here. and so moving along, an issue that was touched on before, is the labor force, participation rate. and what is that?

and that, in a nutshell is the number of people that are either employed, or two, actively looking for a job. and the unemployment rate is calculated from the labor force participation rate. and so it is not the entire it is not the entire population, as a percentage of people that are not employed, it is just the people that are actively in the job hunt or actively employed. and so, just for comparison sake, and the yearly data from 2013, shows that the labor force participation rate and the disability community was on average, 20.3 percent. now if you are like me, that sounds really bad. and to compare that the labor rate for the non-disabled community for the same period was 68.9 percent.

and so the last slide that i showed, indicated that there was actually a slight decline in the number of and in the unemployment rate in the disability community. but what this chart shows is a lion chart with the top line will show you the labor force participation rate and the bottom line shows the unemployment rate and the disability community, and it shows that there is actually a corresponding decline in the labor force, participation rate for the people with disabilities and compared to the unemployment rate in the same community. what does that mean? >> it is not mean that the unemployment rate is coming down because people can disabilities are finding jobs. it means that the people with disabilities by and large are giving up. and that is the important thing to say that that is the discussion in which we are framing this, you know, that is really where we are when we frame this discussion. so most importantly, the big question that we are all asking here today, so what.

employment for people with disabilities, and the employment, across the entire population is a reflection of one's identity. it is something that a lot of us take for granted and everybody has to get up and go to work in the morning, to actually kind of a drag. and well, one of the most, and when you meet somebody new, one of the first questions that you ask, is, what do you do for a living? well the answer to that question, is, i do nothing, how will people with disabilities ever be perceived as equals in the society. and when we talk about having the people with disabilities in the employment sector, it is important to know that there are people and there are studies that show this, and the people with disabilities are more loyal and the private sector studies that indicate that the turnover rate of people with disabilities are

actually 40 percentage points lower than the people without disabilities they are more productive, and they require less sick time and take less time off and they stay longer. and you know, it is something that makes not only good moral sense, but it makes good fiscal sense. they, as pointed out earlier by the supervisor chiu, roughly, and more than a third of people that are on income-based government assistance, identify as having a disability. and so, if we are able to help these folks transition to gainful employment, not only do we run reduced, or the burden on the government to say, you know, to pay those benefits, but we also increase the tax base, no matter what side of the spectrum that you fall on, this is a good idea.

>> all right so coming up next, some of the current challenges with rule 115, and most significantly, from our perspective and from our member's perspective and the other stuff that we have heard in the community is that it does limit to entry level positions and i know, that it was discussed earlier, i believe by the executive officer of the civil service commission that this is all refined, and you know, defined very specifically in the charter. and i know from my time working in the department of human resources you cannot, you cannot go against the super powers, and that is something that, it is also important that you know, that this body, the board of supervisors, has the ability to put things on the ballot to change that. and if we are able to identify a specific package of reforms that need to be made to the charter then that is something that our organization will support wholeheartedly.

but also, moving forward, i think that it is important to note that there has been such a... rule of 115 positions that have come through in the last ten years that there is no real formal process, as defined and pointed out by the department of rehabilitation, and you know, she, as a representative, of the state department, that is required to help people with disabilities find jobs, and was unfamiliar with how the rule should be or is applied to the city, and because, it simply is not. it is not happening. so, you know, we would advocate that there be a and we need to institute a formal structure for how do we educate hiring managers out in the department and build a long lasting pipeline of qualified applicants that are ready to work that want to work for the city. jonathan i am going to have to ask you as quick ls as you can

try to summarize and wrap up. >> sure. >> so, we have a couple of recommendations that have already been discussed. one is that we would advocate the formation of a position, house whatever. and this body will decide along with the mayor. and the two va disability coordinator, and was thinking that it should be somebody from the disability community and somebody familiar with the city process and somebody familiar with the disability with the disability community and how to get things done in the city and this person could be the person to build, a lot of those bridges that we and that i discussed in the last slide and also to help the departments meet some hiring targets that they may or may not have met. and the next recommendation that we have is actually to have hiring targets in the city for the disability community.

analogous to the rehabilitation act that the federal government recently instituted for all of the vendors and i would say that probably the federal government only instituted it for the vendors because doing it for all of the federal service would have applied in an act of congress and as we know those do not happen very much these days. but i know that it is something that has been controversial. and i have discussed this recommendation, with dhr staff, and the population 209 question was pointed out to me and so i try to do a little due diligence and i am not an attorney but i did go back and read the text of the proposition, and i also read the text of charter of chapter 31 of the state charter. s and that out lows affirmative action. and it lists those and it does not actually specifically call out disability as a community that could not, or that where affirmative action is outlawed.

so just lastly, very quickly, you know the city is discussed is at a turning point, you know the mayor's budget that was recently submitted to this body calls for hiring a 1400 new positions over the next two years, people with disabilities are ready willing and able to assume these positions and we are looking for a partnership, from this body and from the city staff, to move forward and to help give people with disabilities hired and to what are very equitable jobs in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. i see no questions, thank you so much for your leadership. and the presentation. >> the next speaker is kate williams, and julie mccarthy for light house for the blind. and we are starting our process to for the public comment is opened now. and we are asking people to try to limit their comments to two minutes. if you need additional time, i

will ask a question or two to extend that time. but, so, miss williams. or miss mccarthy. >> i am with the light house for the blind, and i am managing the immersion plan and i am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you from the community. and i have been thinking about this a lot and i found that the reason it is, and the people with the disabilities are not unemployed because of their disability. they are unemployed because they don't have a job plan and simple. that is why they are unemployed. we can't look at our disability as keeping us from gainful employment. in fact, if i look at this room right now, the people from our

community those who are here with disabilities and representing our community, we could fill this chamber with so many more people who would have the resume in hand and they would say that i want to work. and that is why we are here today. it is because the people with disabilities could be the most overly educated under employed people in your whole community. i am a senior citizen, and and i am blind and that is two strikes against me and i feel that i am the most fortunate person in the world, because i have a job. it brings me great joy, to work with the people in our community, specifically i work with the blind. and i know that in working with them, we have had over 110 people go through our program. and we have had a 34 percent placement rate with those people and so you can't tell me that they are not ready for jobs, i think that some of the

most coveted jobs are with the city when i ask the people, when we ask them where they want to work and it is going to be at the city. at the light house, we have developed i think an outstanding and remarkably close relationship with the hr department. and i can't thank donna enough for being always, open, and listening, and the reasons for wanting to have the people gain employment. and we have actually placed someone, with the city, through rule 115, and we would like to see that happen more frequently and just two recommendations from at least our community, is that many of the people that work with us are not entry level, even though they may have a gap in their resume because they have taken time out to retrain with adaptive technology. and makes us capable in respond the entry level. and we like you to consider

that it be opened more and more closely immulate the schedule. and we would like to see it moved more frequently. >> those are our two question requests but we do want to thank them for hiring three of the other people from the program and through 115. thank you. >> the next speaker is terry goodwin from the ark. thank you very much supervisors and the ark san francisco has been placing people successfully in jobs for over 35 years. and we recently experienced a lot of success because of the tech boom, which is wonderful but it has been historically difficult in good times and bad and as was referenced before, the unemployment for the people

with disabilities is high and i think that it is close to 70 percent of the people who really want to work or 80 percent. and so, we have not had much success with the rule 115. we have had one hire in 2001. and we actually have had a placement through the maria shriver initiative in 2007 with the city which is great, and we really want to react vait this and gets people hired and just to comment on the reason why the rule 115 did so well in the 80 and 90s, they had a very active role and they had a placement person that was marketing to the department heads, and most of all, diane who was mayor at that time, really had a call to action with all of the department heads. and the other big reason was because there was a point person hired within the city, that sent the job postings out on a regular basis and was marketing internally and i think that those are the three key reasons and i did have the opportunity to participate on

an advisory council, with the hr department, there were a lot of recommendations that came out of that. and to my knowledge, most of them were never implemented for whatever reason and i will not go through each one of those but what i will get to right now is the list of recommendations that the arc has. we would really like to see and other organizations have mentioned it as well and we would really like to see the reenergizing of some of those former recommendations and we would like to see the implementation of our plan to actually have regular opportunities for the cbos, to meet with the hr and the managers and we would also really like to see internship opportunities for people in a wide range of positions with different departments, providing supported and employment. to help to build a bridge to successful job hires and we want to encourage the mayor, mayor lee to give a call to action around this effort.

and let's see, the other piece that i would like to mention that we would like to encourage to this and maybe this advisory council, and this advisory group to readvise and get to look at the other successful programs and what i have to do with the one in seattle and they have an excellent program and supported employment, and coordinators that facilitates a lot of the hires with a lot of the vendors and i think that would be one to look at and there are other programs you know throughout the country that we can look at as well. thank you very much. and we look forward to more jobs, that is the main goal here. >> thanks for the service on that past advisory panel and i can't locate any of the documents so if we could get that at some point. >> i can scan those and send those to you. it was more than just the rule 115, it was a full, three-page recommendation, and so i would be glad to do that. >> and thanks for your current

day recommendations as well. >> thank you very much. >> the next speaker is lorens from the san francisco independent living resource center and she will be followed by jessica layman from the senior disability action. >> is jessy here? >> apparently jessy could not be here. so maybe, if jessica layman could come forward. and thanks to the senior disability action for being here as well. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors thank you so much for holding this hearing. my name is jessica layman at senior disability action and we of course are concerned with the very low employment rates of people with disabilities and we have them regularly coming through the doors and the people with disabilities and seniors and a lot of overlap who are looking for jobs and

anything and it is very, very difficult. and this is a civil rights issue as has been pointed out and also an issue for what is good for our city and we want the people with all sorts of perspectives working in our city and sharing their experiences. so, we are really glad that this issue is being considered. on the issue of tracking, for starters, the system piece is to know how many people with all kinds of disabilities we have working in the city, and we believe that it is not only allowed, but it is required of some federal contractors if that happened and we support the other suggestions that have been raised by the fdr democratic club and others, and so thank you again supervisors for taking on the issue of employment and the people with disability and we look forward to working with them. >> thank you. i am going to call a couple of cards now and the people don't have to come forward in this order, just if your name is called, you could, so we have vera hail from the long term

care coordinating council, sarah murphy, vandermay from the academy of sciences and david fasio, susan phifer and john alex lowl, anybody who name was mentioned you can come forward and i will call the other cards in a minute. and thank you miss hail for your long time work for seniors and people with disabilities as well. >> so, this is vera hail. >> yes. yes. >> thank you, for the introduction. i am a member of the long term care coordinating council as well as a few other organizations that some of you know about and i am on a subcommittee that is working on making san francisco more age and disabled friendly city. and one of