Legislature(2007 - 2008)CAPITOL 120
01/23/2008 01:00 PM House JUDICIARY
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| Overview(s): Chanlyut | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
| *+ | HJR 27 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED |
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE JUDICIARY STANDING COMMITTEE
January 23, 2008
1:05 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Jay Ramras, Chair
Representative Nancy Dahlstrom, Vice Chair
Representative John Coghill
Representative Bob Lynn
Representative Ralph Samuels
Representative Lindsey Holmes
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Max Gruenberg
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
OVERVIEW(S): CHANLYUT
- HEARD
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 27
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the State of
Alaska authorizing a contractual limitation on taxes related to
the production of gas for the purpose of providing fiscal
certainty for the construction of a natural gas pipeline.
- SCHEDULED BUT NOT HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
GLORIA O'NEILL, President/CEO
Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc.(CITC)
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented an overview of the Chanlyut
Corporation Program.
LISA RIEGER, Vice President; General Counsel
Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc.(CITC)
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Answered questions during overview of the
Chanlyut Corporation Program.
ACTION NARRATIVE
CHAIR JAY RAMRAS called the House Judiciary Standing Committee
meeting to order at 1:05:19 PM. Representatives Dahlstrom,
Coghill, Samuels, Lynn, Holmes, and Ramras were present at the
call to order.
^OVERVIEW(S): CHANLYUT
1:05:30 PM
CHAIR RAMRAS announced that the only order of business would be
the overview regarding Chanlyut Corporation Programs.
1:06:39 PM
GLORIA O'NEILL, President/CEO, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc.
(CITC), stated that she is a lifelong Alaskan who wants to make
a difference in her community. She has been employed by the
CITC for the past 15 years and has held her current position for
the past 10 years. She explained that CITC is the parent
organization for the Chanlyut project. She explained that CITC
is a tribal nonprofit social services provider that focuses on
the Southcentral region of Alaska. CITC has moved from being a
traditional social services provider towards a model that
creates opportunities and encourages self sufficiency and
personal accountability, she noted. The CITC's mission is to
work in partnership with people and to develop opportunities
that fulfill people's potential. CITC's believes in serving
people "with a hand up rather than a handout." She opined that
CITC provides "cradle to grave" social services whose focus is
education and youth. She stated that CITC invests about $3
million annually in the Anchorage School District, providing
opportunities to about 700 Alaska Native youth. The
organization also focuses on workforce development and is
currently the largest tribal welfare to work provider in the
United States. She opined that last year the CITC moved 700
Alaska Native families from welfare to jobs. She said she hopes
to create job training opportunities for Alaska natives. The
CITC's goals are to become less reliant on the United States
government and to generate more of its own revenue. She opined
that this mission helps leverage social services dollars more
effectively.
MS. O'NEILL explained that CITC currently offers approximately
50 programs to the 40,000 native people living in Southcentral
Alaska. She noted that last year CITC served over 6,000
individuals. She said she felt that CITC's services will become
even more important due to the migration of the native
population from rural Alaska to urban communities. One of the
reasons that CITC started the Chanlyut program was that it
embodies the beliefs of personal accountability that the
organization supports.
MS. O'NEILL showed a video presentation in which clients of
Chanlyut provided information about their personal situations
and goals. One unidentified male said he is a felon and that
next week he will be off probation for the first time in 10
years. He stated that "Chanlyut" is a Dena'ina Athabascan word
that means new beginnings. He related that Chanlyut gives
people who face drug and alcohol addictions an opportunity for a
new start.
1:18:12 PM
MS. O'NEILL offered that the power of Chanlyut is derived from
its residents. She pointed out that Chanlyut is modeled after a
successful Delancey Street Foundation project called "Delancey
Street, San Francisco" which has operated for over 30 years
without any state funds. She noted that the San Francisco
facility houses 500 ex-convicts who work in a setting that feels
comfortable to visitors. The success and recidivism rate of 27
percent in the Delancey Street, San Francisco facility, offers
Chanlyut hope for promising results as compared to the Alaska
prison system and its recidivism rate. She stated that CITC is
one of four groups that have worked with the Delancey Street
Foundation over the past five years.
MS. O'NEILL continued by stating that Chanlyut is not state
funded. Instead, it is totally funded by the businesses that
accept residents as employees and by private donations.
Participants engage in business management and develop personal
responsibility and self-sufficiency in the program, she opined.
Currently, the program assists men to recover from substance
abuse and chronic homelessness. Although, she added, that phase
three of the program would add women to the program. The CITC's
mission is based on accountability and the Chanlyut residents
must make a two year commitment to the program. She opined that
CITC has high expectations for its clients. Many traditional
treatment programs span 30 days to one year, she offered.
However, that amount of time is not sufficient enough for many
of Chanlyut's clients to make lifestyle changes. One element of
the program assists clients in gaining paraprofessional skills
and the CITC hopes to add other educational components in the
near future. In order to be accepted, the potential client must
demonstrate a willingness to learn and care for self, others,
and the community.
1:27:57 PM
MS. O'NEILL offered that the Anchorage Assembly unanimously
supported proposed changes to the municipal ordinances and other
changes necessary to allow CITC to continue to operate the
program that can assist to 20 residents. In July 2007, Chanlyut
began to operate a diner that is open for breakfast and lunch
Monday through Saturday. Clients take part in all operations,
she noted. She reported that the current positive cash flow
from the diner activities will be reinvested into the program.
In addition to initial facility costs, the CITC is in
partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the
Rasmusson Foundation. Community members have donated seed money
to help the start the enterprises and due to zoning changes, the
Chanlyut facility now provides one alternative to incarceration.
She noted that the CITC looks forward to signing a joint
Memorandum of Understanding for its 20-bed facility, which could
potentially result in cost savings of $420,000 per year.
1:32:10 PM
LISA RIEGER, Vice President; General Counsel, Cook Inlet Tribal
Council, Inc. (CITC), noted that the video committee members
viewed was not scripted. She recalled that Chair Ramras visited
the Delancey Street program in San Francisco. She shared her
enthusiasm for the great potential for the Chanlyut program in
Alaska. She pointed out that the Delancey Street Foundation
project is comprised of five locations nationwide and will not
expand further. However, the Eisenhower Foundation's desire to
replicate the Delancey Street program's success elsewhere led to
CITC being one of the five sites selected nationwide. She
echoed the philosophical tenet mentioned earlier which is one of
self-reliance and self-sufficiency. She stated that the
principal of healing thorough helping others is a message that
is reinforced to their clients. She said, "There is always
someone two days behind you and two days ahead of you." She
related that Mimi Silbert, who is the President and CEO of the
Delancey Street Foundation, once said, "We are all on this
mountain together holding hands and we can either pull all of us
down or we can pull all of us up."
1:34:36 PM
MS. RIEGER offered that Chanlyut uses the two prongs of extended
family and education as the means to help people move up the
mountain together. She stated the idea stems from the Delancey
Street facility on the Lower East side of New York City where
immigrants arrived in the country and learned from immigrants
already here how to negotiate in the United States. They
learned English, how to dress, and how to find the library from
the immigrants already residing in New York City. "Maintenance"
is the first step of the Chanlyut program and clients initially
work 16-hour days and are too tired to disrupt others. The
second step of the program is "immigration" in which clients
learn to navigate a bit more and the third phase is when clients
become part of the "academy" and to lead others.
MS. RIEGER opined that their clients are really re-learning
social behaviors. She said that it is similar to the person
having his life on a tape recorder, that he can press stop and
replay the activity to discover what is not okay. Clients
eventually learn how to act as a productive member of society,
she offered. No one else will do things for the clients, such
as opening the diner in the morning, so the clients begin to
realize that they must perform their own assignments.
MS. O'NEILL relayed that one of the clients was grousing about
his responsibilities and she offered that her response was to
ask him, "What do you think that we have to do every day?"
CHAIR RAMRAS recalled his visit to the Delancey Street
Foundation facility in San Francisco. He suggested that members
should take steps to visit the project in San Francisco and
should entertain the possibility of expanding CITC's Chanlyut
program to a 100 bed facility due to the remarkably low
recidivism rate that is possible for this program. He explained
that the Delancey Street San Francisco project consists of five
businesses, one of which is a restaurant. Typically, he said
that restaurant costs are divided into three roughly equal
expenses consisting of food, labor, and overhead. In the
Delancey Street San Francisco restaurant, the clients are not
paid and their payroll and any gratuities help to fund the
program. Other business models in the Delancey project include
one of the largest moving companies and a Christmas ornament
business with sales of about $1 million per year. He
characterized the Delancey San Francisco project as almost
beyond description. He opined that some of the problems that
the Chanlyut program currently experiences are due to its small
scale. He noted that so many people that are incarcerated
cannot find any way out, but with the Chanlyut program they
might see a glimmer of an opportunity to succeed.
1:44:15 PM
MS. O'NEILL, in response to Representative Holmes, answered that
the program began in 2006. In further response to
Representative Holmes, Ms. O'Neill responded that 6 or 7 people
are currently in the program, but offered that it has a capacity
of up to 20 people. She surmised that the 100 percent ownership
must come from the residents, which she opined is the key
ingredient to making the Chanlyut program a success. She noted
that some of the early clients are currently making huge shifts
towards gaining the necessary leadership abilities. She said
she anticipates expanding the residency to 20 clients by early
summer and will work to develop the necessary leadership
necessary before expanding to a larger program.
CHAIR RAMRAS offered his understanding that one of the
philosophical approaches that the Delancey Street Foundation
took was to understand that many people are drawn to the social
services fields for the tremendous rewards derived from serving
the segment of the population. The Delancey Street Foundation's
premise is that the community should derive its self-reliance,
which should not be strained through the social services
community. Therefore, some elements of the population are
excluded from participating in the program such as sex offenders
and the mentally ill.
MS. RIEGER also pointed out that the inmates and clients know
"every trick in the book" so they aren't easily fooled by
anything that a new client might try.
1:47:57 PM
REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES asked who qualifies for the program and
for Ms. O'Neill to describe the referral process for the
Chanlyut program.
MS. O'NEILL surmised that the program is open to anyone who is
having difficulties in life. Currently, the program has
received client referrals from judges and parole officers. She
offered that the homeless, those suffering from drug or alcohol
addictions, and those released from prison are eligible to
participate in the program. She noted that potential clients
are interviewed to determine whether this program is the
appropriate choice for them. The Chanlyut program reinforces
success at every turn. Thus, the selection process is very
important and valuable.
1:50:55 PM
MS. O'NEILL, in response to Representative Lynn, surmised that
the Chanlyut program chose to focus on one gender in order to
develop leadership skills. She also pointed out that the prison
population in prison is comprised of mostly men. She said she
envisions that the Chanlyut program will have coed facilities at
some point in the future.
REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELS related his understanding that a person
would apply for and be accepted into the residential facility.
He inquired as to whether that person would undergo or
participate in any outside treatment during the two year
program.
MS. RIEGER said that three people are trained for each job so
that when a person graduates from the program, someone steps in
to take the job. Initially, residents are assigned to wash
dishes, but she noted that the day is split up by meetings. If
someone has been ordered to participate in alcohol or drug
treatment programs, the person is referred to CITC for service
offsite. Another option available to clients is to take
parenting and anger management classes provided by the CITC.
She opined that the Chanlyut program consists of 24 hours a day
of behavior modification and residents are not free to leave the
facility. This initial group of residents built the diner as a
labor component of the program. These clients have now
progressed and are moving into the service component at the
diner.
1:55:04 PM
MS. O'NEILL characterized the residents as being part of a
structured family and as clients progress into leadership roles,
they take on a role that is similar to a parental role. The
resident's routine is comprised of work, but the facility will
soon add an option to attend afternoon classes at the University
of Alaska Anchorage. She noted that when a client shops for
food for the diner, another client in a leadership role
accompanies him. She pointed out that the program is based on
structure and accountability at every level.
CHAIR RAMRAS pointed out one of the unusual aspects of the
original program is that it does not contain a faith based
component.
REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELS inquired as to whether the monitoring is
all in-house.
MS. O'NEILL answered that the residents monitor one another. In
fact, she said that some clients have been removed from the
program due to behavior. In further response to Representative
Samuels, Ms. O'Neill explained that the difference between the
Delancey Street Foundation and the Chanlyut project is that the
Delancey Street Foundation does not use state funds. One
downside to that is that the foundation does not track clients
as closely as she envisions the Chanlyut program will be able to
do.
REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELS expressed concern that some state
programs have difficulty tracking recidivism when the person
leaves the state. He also inquired as to whether other business
ventures will be considered.
MS. O'NEILL offered that the leadership clients at Chanlyut will
be involved in the decision making process for any new venture.
She noted that the current director has art frame shop business
experience, which may lead to a new venture.
MS. RIEGER pointed out that all of the ventures that will be
considered for the Chanlyut project need to be high labor
intensive enterprises that require relatively small capital
outlays in order to succeed.
CHAIR RAMRAS inquired as to whether Chanlyut will reach out to
other communities via the prison system such that inmates could
apply to participate in the program.
MS. O'NEILL surmised that Chanlyut is starting out in the same
way as the model program started 30-35 years ago. She
envisioned that the Chanlyut program would progress in the same
way. She expects the program to first expand services in
Anchorage and later to expand services to other communities.
2:03:38 PM
REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELS asked whether creating competition with
private industry is a concern.
MS. O'NEILL answered that the Chanlyut program has not received
any comments about competition from private industry to date.
She opined that relationships that have been formed with the
Mountain View Community Council are positive. She surmised that
Chanlyut will work to form similar relationships with the
business community as the program expands. She expressed
confidence that the Chanlyut program will be able to work
through any competition issues. She pointed out that one of the
Anchorage chefs has currently been assisting the diner residents
acquire restaurant skills.
MS. RIEGER, in response to Representative Lynn, explained that
the facility has 16 beds in an open dorm and 4 beds in 2
separate bedrooms. This setting allows clients to progress in
leadership roles to earn privacy.
The committee took an at-ease from 2:08 p.m. to 2:20 p.m.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
Judiciary Standing Committee meeting was adjourned at 2:21 p.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|