The Current State of DVR: DVR Director Demoted After Only One Year

DVR Director Demoted After One Year

One year nearly to the day after starting as Colorado DVR's new Director, Joelle Brouner was  demoted on October 6, adding insult to the injury already inflicted on nearly 9,000 Coloradans with disabilities since the state's vocational rehabilitation program nose-dived into an all-categories waiting list in early 2013. 

The move by DVR's umbrella agency, the Department of Human Services (DHS) triggered a flurry of angry and concerned e-mails from disability advocates, as well as the resignation of Josh Winkler as Co-chair of DVR's State Rehabilitation Council (SRC) in protest. 

In his letter of resignation to Governor John Hickenlooper Winkler wrote, "I am writing to formally resign my position on the State Rehabilitation Council (SRC) in protest of the demotion of Joelle Brouner from Executive Director of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) ... by the upper management at the Department of Human Services (CDHS). I will not serve on behalf of an administration that doesn’t support the employment of people with disabilities in professional jobs, including state government jobs."

Blind Coloradans are all too aware of the crisis that Colorado's state-federal program has been in since early 2013.  It is a crisis that was years in the making, and which saw DVR's previous Director Nancy Smith quietly eased out of view and out of state employment while Coloradans with the highest priority disabilities were put on hold for a year and longer.

Steve Anton, previously serving as a financial staffer in the Disability Determination unit, has been named as Interim Director.  He has no background in Vocational Rehabilitation, but is a self-styled “numbers guy.”  Brouner, who has spent her career in Rehabilitation and has a refreshingly strong grasp of the program’s intent as well as the Rehabilitation Services Administration’s regulations and policies,  has been moved to a newly created position as Director of Client Relations.

The Questions

The NFB of Colorado is left with a lot of questions about DVR's viability as an agency though, to be completely fair, we've had a number of them for years.

What problem does Brouner's re-assignment fix for DVR, an agency that had clearly gotten into the worst mess in the United States? 

“Everybody’s watching Colorado,” an administrator of a neighboring state’s VR program told us about Colorado’s dramatic  entry into what the Rehab Act calls “Order of Selection.”  “This has never happened before.” 

That is, no state VR program has so dramatically ended up with a waiting list, and no waiting list has ever grown as large as Colorado’s had.  Despite the enormity of the problems, Brouner was slowly beginning to get the results that her superiors and the auditors and the Governor seemed to want.

And what is the plan now?  DHS says it will soon announce a search for a new administrator.  Who do they think they can possibly attract to the job?  What qualified Rehabilitation administrator would possibly consider Colorado’s DHS a good prospective employer?  Make no mistake, DVR needs someone who knows Rehab and can walk the thin line of running an effective VR program while keeping the numbers crunched satisfactorily. 

Are we destined to the start-and-stop approach for the long run?

Have DHS administrators ever driven with a clutch, or only an automatic?

Chugga, chugga, chugga.

Brouner’s Year

Only eight days after taking the DVR job, Brouner came to our 2013 convention in Colorado Springs.  She was hired in October, 2013 after Colorado experienced the worst disaster in Vocational Rehabilitation since the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which marks the beginning of the modern history of the program.  During her one-year tenure, though with a lot of drag from her DHS superiors, Brouner managed to open the waiting list  which was in danger of becoming larger than DVR's active clients at the time (It was approaching 7000 names), and removed about 4000 of those names from the waiting list.  Another 1000 or so names were removed this month after her demotion.

Brouner came on board only two months before the devastating Legislative Audit Council's report of December 10, 2013 – an audit that DHS Director Reggie Bicha called for.  That report found serious fiscal and administrative failures in DVR, and made 64 major recommendations to address them.  Most of the recommendations were without question necessary and overdue, but some were draconian and completely out of synch with Rehabilitation Act's strong requirements for individualized plans and informed choice.  Coming so late in the audit process, it certainly appeared that Brouner was given little if any latitude in negotiating those recommendations.  Nonetheless, 58 of 64 of those recommendations were implemented in the ten months prior to her demotion.

She was doing what was asked of her.    In fact, in the Gubernatorial Disability Forum on September 26 both Governor Hickenlooper and challenger Bob Beauprez  stated that DVR was on the right track thanks to Brouner's leadership.  The forum was live-streamed by Metropolitan State University and the Denver Post, and was re-broadcast on KCDO-TV in half-hour segments the same week that Brouner's demotion was announced.

http://harbertv.com/GovForum.html

On July 29, the Colorado Cross-disability Coalition (CCDC) announced that Brouner would be one of its Annual ADA Access Award recipients for 2014.  CCDC chose Brouner "for her commitment and efforts to fix the Colorado Vocational Rehabilitation Program …"

http://ccdconline.org/colorado-cross-disability-coalition-announces-its-2014-award-recipients-24th-anniversary-americans-d

In addition, DVR held four public hearings in April on its state plan - its first public hearings in seven years.  Federal rules require the submission of a plan for providing services from every state, and states are also required to seek and consider public comment.  DVR's four hearings were a little ragged around the edges, but it should be commended and encouraged for getting back in the saddle.  After seven years, there surely was very little organizational memory about how to do a public hearing.

The Spin

In response to e-mails of outrage from disability advocates, including other members of the SRC, DHS Deputy Director Viki Manley tried to put an astonishing spin on things, claiming that not only was the move mutually agreed-upon, but that Brouner actually sought the change.

Sure, and ketchup is a vegetable.

But there is another question on our minds – how does DHS just create a new position in state government?  Where did the money come from?  Is this a political move made with some sort of unencumbered funds from somewhere?  And if it is more or less a political appointment of sorts, just how secure is this position, which reports say still doesn’t have a job description?

Apparently, Manley and DHS Director Reggie Bicha weren’t keeping Hickenlooper in the loop.  That, or fixing DVR is no longer a political priority.

Really, the question is whether we can expect DHS to ever show itself capable of understanding, let alone administering, a successful vocational rehabilitation program in the state of Colorado.  DHS has shown itself to be utterly clueless as to the purpose and nature of vocational rehabilitation and indifferent to the Coloradans with disabilities who apply looking for a hand up.  We should expect what they have shown us so far – mismanagement, misdirection and obfuscation. 

Chugga, chugga, chugga