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Well, good morning everyone and as you can tell this is a little bit of a different
format for our executive staff meeting and
it's because i want to deliver a particular message
and I want you all
to hear it together
and I want then for all of us to understand when we leave the room today
what our particular responsibilities are and what my expectation is of each of
you
to get to the other end.
So we've had a lot of press recently uh... reports written about us,
legislators asking questions
and all of that is circling around the fact that D_T_S_ C
is in a crisis mode right now.
Those problems which are not new to any of you in this room...we've had warning
signs of them
for quite a while now
and those problems need fixing
and I think everyone
in the room with me today
fully understands the importance
of getting to the other side of this.
The importance
for the staff at D_T_S_C because they want us to fix them.
Also the importance for the people of California
because they need us to fix them.
Many of the problems that we've addressed together actually systemic
problems. Whether it's our cost recovery system or the way we do financial
assurance or even the way we do H_R in hiring.
These are systemic problems
that need fixing
and many of them
are already on their way to being fixed.
It's critical that we create systems
that are robust
and institutionalized
because of the end of my tenure
whoever comes after me
is going to be inheriting the structures that we put in place together.
Now how do we get
to that end.
We've been working hard as a team to identify those problems and in fact
we've come up
with a list of
what we call fundamentals.
Because we understand that what we're doing here together
is fixing the foundation of this place.
Every single one of us is part of that solution
and everyone of us needs to be held accountable.
So how we're going to do that...we are going to be public about ourselves.
We are not hiding our warts. We are not afraid of our problems because it's not
about blame
it's about fix.
So we are posting
those thirty-some-odd items
and that list will grow, that is
living document.
As we look at the intersection between
the fundamentals and the strategic plan
other projects surface
and become equally important
for all of us to be focusing on
and holding ourselves accountable
and i'm actually incredibly optimistic.
I'm a scientist and so I look for evidence when I say why should I be
optimistic: it's because we got evidence in our favor that shows we actually can
fix things and we have fixed things. When I started our budget was upside down. Our
revenues have been below expenditures
for five years in a row.
Our budget shop
knew the problem had been signaling that this was
a challenge for us because our surplus was going rapidly to zero.
When i started it was at zero.
Our toxic substance control account
needed to be balanced and we balance to it.
We've been embarking on and external review of permitting
that has allowed
a tremendous amount of surfacing
by inside and outside on what are the problems and solutions needed by that
program that very central program
to our department.
I call that a success
because we're starting down the path.
Our
personnel system...
When I started our...the audit
that was done by C_A_L_H_R
showed a seventy percent miss allocation rate
which gave us squarely in the red or unacceptable range.
Our H_R_ shop,
with the leadership
of our admin team,
has gone from red to green in record time.
We are now
receiving awards from C_A_L_H_R.
None of this is a light switch, none of the changes we will make will happen
overnight
but they only start to happen when we identify them.
I believe we all are here because at our very core
we believe in public service
and we believe in the idea of
civil service,
civil society,
and that were using our talents
and our gifts as human beings to
better the public,
to protect the planet,
to give back
to this state that we each are proud to live in
and Californians expect that of us.
They expect us to be giving our best to this state because it's a honor
to be public servants.
It's not an obligation
and with that expectation
comes responsibility
and with that responsibility comes accountability
and my closing thought to you
is we share that together
and I need you
to take that out of this room
and everyday bring it
back to your staff
so that they to understand
that obligation and that honor
about being...
that comes with being in the public sector.
So thank you.